Solitaire

A word that lost its edges

What people actually mean by "solitaire"

Solitaire is not a game. It is the name of a category — any card game played by one person — and it contains somewhere between several hundred and a couple of thousand named games, depending on how generously you count variants.

In practice the word collapsed onto a single member of that category. Microsoft shipped Klondike with Windows in 1990, called it Solitaire, and left it there for a quarter of a century. For most people the word now means that specific seven-column game, which is why it is the one playable at the top of this page.

Outside North America the older word is patience, and in Britain solitaire once meant the peg-board puzzle rather than anything to do with cards. That split, and what the game is called across the rest of Europe, is covered on the patience game page.

The honest answer

Is solitaire skill or luck?

It depends entirely on which one you are playing, and the range is wider than people expect. At one end, Clock Patience has no decisions at all — you are watching a shuffle resolve, and it wins about one time in thirteen no matter who is holding the cards. At the other, FreeCell hides nothing and almost every deal is solvable, so a loss is genuinely a mistake you made.

Klondike sits awkwardly in the middle, which is why it generates so much argument. Twenty-one face-down cards mean some deals cannot be won by anyone, and there is no way to tell which from the opening position. Playing well raises your rate substantially; it does not take it anywhere near certainty.

The useful move is to pick the game that matches your mood rather than trying to be good at one that does not reward it. If losing to the shuffle irritates you, play something with nothing face down. If you want the tension, the hidden cards are the point.

One caveat before you go looking: solitaire has no governing body, so the same game name can mean noticeably different rules on different sites — and those differences change how winnable a deal is. Every game page here states its exact version for that reason. The variations index sorts all of them by family and sets out the five rules worth checking before you start.

Pick one

Which solitaire should you play next?

The honest answer depends less on difficulty than on how much thinking you are in the mood for and how long you have.

If none of those fit, the full variations index lists every playable game here, grouped by family, with its layout, reserve and stock rules side by side — including the two-deck grinders like Forty Thieves that do not fit neatly into any of the rows above.