Say solitaire and most people picture a green background, seven columns of cards and, after a win, cards bouncing across the screen. Card games in which one person lays out cards by a set of rules are, however, about two hundred years older than personal computers.
Patience and solitaire
In English these games have two names. In Britain they are called patience, in America solitaire. Patience is the older of the two and, according to Wikipedia, the first to appear in both British and American sources. Solitaire only became the usual word in North America in the 20th century. The card games writer David Parlett prefers patience, because solitaire can also mean other one-player games. In Slovak and Czech, by the way, the games are called solitér, or pasiáns, borrowed from the French word patience.
The first description, 1783
The oldest known description of a card game for one player appeared in 1783 in a German games anthology, Das neue Königliche L’Hombre-Spiel, where it is called Patience. Earlier handbooks from the 17th century, such as The Compleat Gamester of 1674, have no such games.
Wikipedia points to an interesting link. Around 1765, cartomancy spread, telling fortunes from cards laid out in fixed patterns. Shortly afterwards the first patience games appear in print. It may be that people used to laying out cards on the table gradually turned the layouts into a game.
France, Russia and Victorian England
By the early 19th century, patience games were popular in France. The first book devoted only to them was published in Russia in 1826. The games reached Britain and America in the second half of the 19th century.
In London, William Henry Cremer published a book called Patience in 1860 under the pen name Perseverance. It has not survived and we only know of it from bibliographies. The first English collection is therefore often said to be Lady Adelaide Cadogan’s Illustrated Games of Patience from around 1870. Its second edition is dated 1874.
In America, Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney wrote the first treatise in 1869. William Brisbane Dick published Dick’s Games of Patience in 1883, and from 1888 Mary Whitmore Jones described about 250 different games in a series of books.
Some patience games carry famous names. One is called Napoleon at St Helena, also known as Forty Thieves. The name is decoration rather than proof that Napoleon ever played it.
How Klondike came about
Klondike is the best-known patience in the world today, yet the old handbooks do not mention it. The earliest known rules appeared in the 1907 edition of Hoyle’s Games under the name Seven-Card Klondike, with cards turned three at a time. By 1913 the Official Rules of Card Games simply calls it Klondike, and the pack is run through one card at a time.
Where the name comes from is uncertain. It is often linked to the gold rush in the Klondike region of the Canadian Yukon at the end of the 19th century, but Wikipedia notes that there is no material evidence for this.
In America, Klondike was long known as Canfield, perhaps because it was played for money at the Canfield casino in Saratoga Springs. Today, though, Canfield in America usually means a different game, which the British call Demon.
In casinos, Klondike became a gambling game known as Las Vegas Solitaire. Wikipedia gives an example: the player paid 50 dollars and the house paid back 5 dollars for every card that reached a foundation. Cards were dealt one at a time and the stock could be passed through only once.
Windows 3.0
The turning point came in 1990, when Microsoft included Solitaire, a version of Klondike, in Windows 3.0. It was written in the summer of 1988 by Wes Cherry, an intern at Microsoft at the time. The cards were designed by Susan Kare, who had earlier designed the icons for the first Apple Macintosh.
The game had a practical purpose. Many people were sitting in front of a computer with a mouse for the first time. Solitaire taught them to click, drag and drop without anyone having to explain it. According to Microsoft’s own usage data, Solitaire was among the three most used programs in Windows.
Solitaire was part of every version of Windows from 1990 to Windows 8.1. In 2012 Microsoft released Microsoft Solitaire Collection, developed by Arkadium. At the game’s 30th anniversary in 2020, Microsoft estimated 35 million monthly players. In 2019 Microsoft Solitaire was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame at The Strong museum in Rochester, New York.
A game maths cannot quite work out
For such a familiar game, nobody knows its exact odds. If the player could see every card, about 82 percent of draw-three deals could be solved. A real player cannot see the hidden cards, so the real chance is lower. The mathematician Persi Diaconis called the inability to work out the exact figure one of the embarrassments of applied probability.
Solitaire today
Solitaire on HoyHop is Klondike as people know it from Windows: seven columns, four foundations and drawing one or three cards. It adds a daily deal, the same for every player and chosen so that it can be solved. You can play it here. If you only know the game roughly, read Klondike solitaire rules in detail and Solitaire tips and strategy.