CULTURE
One Is The Loneliest Number
I am something of a nostalgist when it comes to recreational card games, having
grown up in the northwoods among men who would pull out a deck of cards at
the slightest sign of rain.
Gin Rummy, Bridge, Hearts, Sheepshead, Spit in the Ocean. I’ve played them all. But none more than Solitaire, where I think of myself as accomplished in both the single and double solitaire modes.
It was easy enough in my youth to think of these games as mild amusements. But now that they have been transferred to mouse-clicking computer software, I open my new Solitaire programs with dread, fearing I will spend the next many hours in mind-numbing, time-wasting, all-encompassing addiction.
In its earliest forms, Solitaire was called “Patience” and legend holds it was played by both Napoleon Bonaparte and Tolstoy, who wrote briefly about it in War and Peace.
The game jumped the ocean shortly after the American Civil War, and spread west in a variety of versions. The most popular was called Klondike, where a single deck of cards is laid out in seven ascending rows. Aces allow the player to establish a “foundation” for each of four suits; and each foundation can be built up as the next card appears from the deck, or at the bottom of each row.
The French play another version called La Belle Lucie and The Russians are partial to their own game (known in America as Yukon.) By the end of the 1800’s, Solitaire had become such a popular parlor game almost a dozen authors were writing rulebooks for it, Deborah O'Toole notes in her weblog, Irish Eyes. (My favorite title is Annie B. Henshaw’s Amusements for Invalids.)
Now that card games have entered the computer age, the number of Solitaire variations has grown to over 500. Because of the instant shuffle, deal and tally capabilities of the computer, they can now be played with as many as four active decks – 208 cards – thus turning the probability of victory into something akin to winning little Lotto.
Solitaire comes installed on nearly every computer sold. But if you want the expanded graphics versions, you can download them free off the internet from sites like 123 Free Solitaire, FreeCell, or Mike's Cards -– and then you are really hooked.
I want to be honest about my Solitaire addiction here. I play at least 45 minutes a day (while waiting for my email to download, I tell myself.) But it’s not unusual for me to spend as much as two hours a day playing computer Solitaire (during my writer’s block, I tell myself) even on days where I think I'm really busy.
I long ago gave up on Klondike. Not enough cards. My favorite game is Spider – a two-deck, 10-column version where I can tell after the first deal whether I have a chance of winning. [A clue: if you haven’t emptied out two columns before you deal out the next 50 cards, you are sunk. Deal again.]
As I play, I imagine myself playing in Las Vegas against the other great Spider Solitaire players. And I make up my own Las Vegas rules:
* A Player pays $100 to get into each game, and earns back $10 for every unturned card under 10 remaining on the board after his last play.
* If the Player sets up the complete 8-column WIN, he gets $200.
* A Player can, without penalty, re-deal FREE if he doesn’t like the original layout.
* A Player can also double-down after the original deal before he makes his first move.
These rules are, of course, based on my own extensive experience playing cards in Las Vegas (none) and endless hours of playing the game against myself (the greatest Solitaire player in the world.)
When I play against myself, according to my own Las Vegas rules, I still lose. That’s what makes me confident Las Vegas will like them.
But I also know a Solitaire secret no rules can govern: the UNDO button. I know – as does every computer Solitaire player in the world – that I can hit Ctl-Z and whatever move I made, whatever deal I dealt, whatever mistake I ever made, will be erased. And I can start again where I last left off – before I made that dumb move that doomed me.
So armed with the knowledge that I can always undo my mistakes, I play Solitaire against myself (and cheat when it behooves me) for hours on end.
And I know I am not alone. I mentioned my addiction in the lobby at work the other day and found three of my colleagues have the same obsession, each with a different version of the game. One is actually now in withdrawal, having deliberately deleted the game application, thus forcing herself to read a book when bored.
Playing Solitaire on a computer against yourself is an engaging, fast-paced way of testing your own intelligence – and integrity. But it’s also confirmation that Three Dog Night was right: “One IS the Loneliest Number.”
