Solitaire Card Games Online Blog

The game has also maintained a strong foothold in the modern-day cubicle. Despite the easy availability of other cheap amusements, five minutes of dragging cards around on the screen

As the university mainframes of the 1970s gave way to the personal computer, solitaire once again paved the way for a tech revolution. According to a 1994Washington Post article, Microsoft executives wanted Windows Solitaire (a rendering of the game's popular Klondike variant) "to soothe people intimidated by the operating system." Solitaire proved particularly useful in teaching neophytes how to use the mouse. When Microsoft first preloaded solitaire as part of 1990's Windows 3.0, clicking and pointing weren't yet second nature. By dragging and dropping cards, newbies developed the mousing fluency required to use every other Windows program. (The game's pedagogical elements were also a handy cover story. When a Minnesota state legislator got caught playing during a 1995 debate on education funding, she claimed she was merely doing "homework to improve her mouse dexterity.")

Solitaire helped acquaint users with Windows, and it introduced the world to Microsoft's special brand of business ethics. Paul Alfille says that FreeCell's inclusion in Windows 95, and every subsequent version of the OS, was "nothing I did and nothing I condoned." Now an avid Linux user, Alfille says he sold the rights to his version of the game to the University of Illinois, but Microsoft never paid the university a dime in royalties.

Just as Microsoft froze out Netscape, making Internet Explorer the world's dominant Web browser, the three versions of solitaire that are now preinstalled on every Windows PC—Spider Solitaire, Klondike Solitaire, and FreeCell—have ascended to the pinnacle of the world's computer-game hierarchy. In the pre-Internet era, much of solitaire's allure came because it was the only game in town. Moving a black two onto a red three may not have seemed particularly enticing on its own terms, but compared with the visual stimuli provided by an Excel spreadsheet, a post-victory card cascade was an unimaginably rousing spectacle. It's more surprising that these Windows solitaires, with their primitive delights, remain hugely popular despite now competing for our affections with e-mail, the Web, and thousands of online games. According to Microsoft developer-blogger Raymond Chen, the company's usability research crew discovered that the three most-played computer games (solitaire or something else, Microsoft or otherwise, preloaded or user-installed) are, in order … Spider Solitaire, Klondike Solitaire, and FreeCell.

The game's continued pre-eminence is a remarkable feat—it's something akin to living in a universe in which Pong were the most-popular title for PlayStation 3. One reason solitaire endures is its predictability. The gameplay and aesthetic have remained remarkably stable; a visitor from the year 1990 could play the latest Windows version without a glitch, at least if he could figure out how to use the Start menu. It also remains one of the very few computer programs, game or nongame, that old people can predictably navigate. Brad Fregger, the developer of Solitaire Royale, the first commercial solitaire game for the Macintosh and the PC, told me that his 89-year-old mother still calls regularly to brag about her high scores.