In tribute to 1990’s biggest game and a titan of gaming, here is an entire deck of facts about Microsoft’s Solitaire:
1. Solitaire has been available for every release of Windows since Windows 3.0.
2. On Windows 8 it wasn’t pre-installed, though. Boo.
3. Solitaire is based on a real-life card game which may or may not have been played by Napoleon to pass his time in exile, in much the same way as the modern version has long served office workers.
4. Solitaire was considered a good way to teach mouse movement, drag-and-drop etc. to those who hadn’t already been doing that on their Amigas or Atari STs for years.
5. Solitaire was programmed by Microsoft intern Wes Cherry. He was never paid for his efforts.
6. Linux users desperate to play Solitaire have been able to do so since the 1993 introduction of Wine (which stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator).
7. You can play Solitaire on iOS and Android mobile devices too these days, so no need to confine your distraction to desk-based times only.
8. And you can play it in Google by typing Solitaire into the search, and all. No word on if they’ll be bringing in seamless live-streaming for it yet.
9. The modern Windows version of Solitaire contains adverts which can only be removed by paying a subscription, showing how perfectly it has adapted to the current environment.
10. Solitaire was at one point the single most-used Windows application in the world.
11. The original version of Solitaire allows players to switch between Vegas and Standard scoring systems, or to free themselves from the restrictive concept of ‘points’ altogether.
12. Economists believe that Solitaire was responsible for the US recession of 1990-1991.
13. The verified speedrun record for Solitaire is 5 seconds.
14. Tool assisted speedruns have brought times down to as low as 3 seconds.
15. Speedrunners have determined that switching the game language to German allows for the fastest possible time.
16. The top professional Solitaire players regularly earn £200,000 a year in prize money.
17. The highest score you can earn in the standard version of Solitaire is 24,113.
18. 0.25% of possible Solitaire games are impossible to solve.
19. Dr. Maressa Hecht Orzack of Harvard Medical School opened the first clinic for computer addiction in 1996 after becoming obsessed with her Solitaire high score.
20. In 2006, a worker for the city of New York was fired after the city’s mayor saw Solitaire on their computer screen at work.
21. A study by Dr. Jeffrey Goldstein at the University of Utrecht found that being allowed to play Solitaire at work improved employees’ productivity and job satisfaction.
22. Solitaire was the first computer game to be played aboard the International Space Station.
23. Microsoft celebrated Solitaire’s 25th anniversary by holding a tournament that saw the company’s strongest players play against fans.
24. Also to coincide with the 25th anniversary: the release of a set of physical playing cards based on Susan Kare’s initial Solitaire designs.
25. In the US, the 22nd of May each year is officially Solitaire Day.
26. The rest of the world prefers to celebrate Solitaire Day on the 1st of May.
27. In 1998, the billionth game of Solitaire to be played was celebrated with a special presentation at that year’s Solicon.
28. In 2017, Microsoft reversed plans to remove Solitaire from Windows 10 completely, after an outpouring of despair from users at the prospect of it being replaced by Solitaire 3D.
29. Under the right conditions, it is possible to complete a round of Solitaire with only half a left click.
30. Some versions of the game Doom secretly contain a complete, playable version of Solitaire within their code.
31. Solitaire was devised partly as a way of paying tribute to the origins of Microsoft, which was founded in 1889 as a playing card company.
32. Wes Cherry went on to develop a hat-themed sequel, Hataire. It was significantly less successful.
33. Solitaire succeeded despite an initial protest campaign of negative reviews, organised by a group of male gamers upset at what they perceived to be an unrealistic proportion of female characters among the most powerful cards.
34. While there is a buzzing scene of retrogamers playing Solitaire on emulators, some purists consider that it is only worth playing on an original IBM PS/1.
35. The IBN 0401 would be an acceptable alternative were they not all in the ownership of hackers and time travellers.
36. An alternative ending in which all of the cards die was removed as ‘too depressing’, leaving the famous cascade.
37. Hackers have determined that there is a Solitaire stage as part of forthcoming Super Smash Bros. Ultimate downloadable content, leading to speculation on whether the robot from the back of the cards will be included as a fighter.
38. The order of the twelve card backs, with the patterns first and the dressing gown aces last, was determined by the order in which each of them completed a race across a river.
39. The bright beach scene card back was inspired by the meaning of the Latin root of the name Solitaire, ‘the sun is the air’.
40. In addition to the standard card backs, it is rumoured that a cursed thirteenth may appear at midnight on rainy days.
41. If you put your nose right up to one of the patterned card backs, focus as though you are looking through the image into the distance, and very slowly move your face away from the image, you will see a blurry pattern on the back of a card.
42. Variations of the original card game include Spider Solitaire, Klondike Solitaire, Clock Solitaire, and Hexadecimal Solitaire.
43. Factional disagreements between Klondike and Spider loyalists culminated in the 2004 Solitaire War, since when neither side acknowledges the other’s legitimacy.
44. A reference to this dispute appears in Kanye West’s 2007 single “Stronger”.
45. Other musicians to have paid tribute to Solitaire include Chris Webby, Gucci Mane and Neil Sedaka.
46. Microsoft are believed to be currently developing a battle royale version of Solitaire.
47. The forthcoming battle royale version would be the first new entry in the mainline Solitaire series since Solitaire Remix Card Capture Current (Dub Edition).
48. Once there were the cards, and when all else is dust, again shall there be the cards.
49. Solitaire is banned in Belgium.
50. Solitaire having been a UK chart #1 is as real as around half of these facts. Solitaire didn’t make it to the top of the chart, because no one went out to the shops to buy a cassette or disk version of it.
51. It was, though, more widely played in the UK than most (all?) of the games which I am covering around it, and in its own way did as much or more for gaming. The niche of semi-attention-occupying pastime played on devices lots of people were already using for other reasons was to be an exceptionally fruitful one.
52. The particular form of this entry was inspired by an irresistible scheduling coincidence placing it on 1 April, but I do genuinely want to give some attention to games which have made a massive impact without their popularity being in a form that the charts recognise. As such, this is going to be the first of an irregular series doing just that, each time I reach one of those games in my timeline. The series will be called Uncharted. And it’s only a week until I get to its second entry.
[Uncharted is an occasional feature where I look at games which were massively successful but, for whatever reason, were not eligible for the charts so could not possibly have made my list of #1 games. In this case it is because Solitaire was part of Windows rather than sold separately. Note that this post originally appeared on April Fool’s Day]