In the pre-Internet era, much of solitaire’s allure came because it was the only game in town. 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. 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. Solitaire helped acquaint users with Windows, and it introduced the world to Microsoft’s special brand of business ethics. 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.”) (The game’s pedagogical elements were also a handy cover story. By dragging and dropping cards, newbies developed the mousing fluency required to use every other Windows program. When Microsoft first preloaded solitaire as part of 1990’s Windows 3.0, clicking and pointing weren’t yet second nature. According to a 1994 Washington 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. And once you mastered the computerized card game, doing some more serious-minded task on the machine didn’t seem so daunting.Īs the university mainframes of the 1970s gave way to the personal computer, solitaire once again paved the way for a tech revolution. For anyone who had played the real-world game-and that’s most of the grandmother-having population-there was no learning curve with the computer version.

In those days, computers were new and intimidating solitaire was a reassuring presence. FreeCell caught fire in the early days of networked computing, Alfille says, because it was easy to figure out how to play.

Simple solitaire can not play?