History of Solitaire: From Patience to Windows

Solitaire feels like it has always existed: a deck of cards on a kitchen table and a quiet half hour. The real history is patchier than most websites admit. Some parts are well documented. Others are stories repeated until they sounded like facts. This guide separates the two.

What we know about the early years

Single-player card games almost certainly existed before anyone wrote them down. Playing alone with cards is not a hard idea. What historians can point to is the first time such games show up in print.

The commonly cited trail leads to German-language sources around the late 1700s. In Britain the games came to be called patience, and in France réussite, which roughly means "success." Both names fit. You need patience, and when the cards fall right, you have success.

Be wary of anyone who gives an exact birth year or inventor. The defensible answer is "somewhere in 18th-century Europe, and nobody can name the person."

The Napoleon story

You will see claims that Napoleon played solitaire in exile on St. Helena, and that one of the games was named after him. It is a charming story, and it is unverified. Napoleon attracts this kind of tale, so treat it as legend.

Patience in the 19th century

By the 1800s patience was a recognized pastime, especially in Britain. Collections of rules were published, and the games became a respectable parlor activity, often associated with quiet evenings, solitude, or recovering from illness.

One name worth knowing is Lady Adelaide Cadogan, whose Illustrated Games of Patience was first published in 1874 and is one of the earliest English patience books. Books like hers helped fix the rules of many games in print, and several games from that tradition are still played today.

Klondike: the gold rush theory

The standard explanation goes like this. The Klondike gold rush in Canada's Yukon ran from roughly 1896 to 1899. Prospectors, the story says, played the game in camps, and the game took the name of the region.

Is it true? Uncertain. The Klondike name is real and the timing is plausible, but we know of no solid contemporary evidence connecting the card game to the gold fields. Some writers suggest the name was attached later, or was simply a fashionable label. Repeat the theory at a dinner table if you like, as long as you say "supposedly."

The Canfield legend

Canfield has its own tale. It is usually said to be named after Richard Canfield, a casino owner, who supposedly sold players a deck for a fixed price and paid out per card placed on the foundations. The casino figure was real. The payout arrangement is the kind of detail that gets embellished, so we label it a legend. If you want to try the game, our Canfield Solitaire page has it.

Why "solitaire" in the US

In the United States, solitaire became the everyday word for these games, while Britain kept "patience." Today, when most Americans say "solitaire," they mean Klondike.

1990: Windows 3.0 changes everything

Here the facts firm up. Wes Cherry wrote Microsoft Solitaire as an intern in 1988, and it shipped with Windows 3.0 in May 1990. The card deck was designed by Susan Kare, who also worked on early Macintosh icons. Leslie Kooy drew some of the card backs.

Why a card game in an operating system? The purpose usually given is practical. Many people had never used a mouse, and solitaire teaches clicking, dragging, and dropping without a manual. You pick up a card, you move it, you let go. If you make a mistake, nothing is lost. It was a training tool that happened to be fun.

It worked very well. Solitaire became famous as an office distraction, and it entered popular culture as the thing people played instead of working. For a generation, this was their first solitaire, and it was Klondike.

The scoring you may remember

Windows versions offered Standard and Vegas scoring. Those are features of the Windows era, not of the traditional game, which usually had no score at all. Our Klondike uses Windows-style standard scoring, without Vegas. To see how the draw setting changes the game, read our guide to Draw 1 vs Draw 3.

FreeCell and Spider join the family

Windows gave two other games a huge audience.

FreeCell is older than its Windows fame suggests. Paul Alfille created it in 1978 on the PLATO system at the University of Illinois, as a variant of Baker's Game (described by Martin Gardner in Scientific American in 1968) with alternating-color building. Microsoft included FreeCell with Windows in the 1990s, and it became a staple. Nearly every deal can be won with careful planning, which drew people who liked puzzles more than luck. (In the classic Microsoft numbering, deals 1 to 32,000, only #11982 is unwinnable.) You can play it on our FreeCell page.

Spider reached Windows later. It was first released in Microsoft Plus! 98 (1998), came standard with Windows Me (2000), and then appeared in Windows XP and later versions. Its difficulty levels (one, two, or four suits) gave players a natural way to grow. See Spider Solitaire to try it.

From desktop to phone to browser

After Windows, solitaire followed the platforms: handheld devices, early phones, then smartphones. Today you play in a browser tab or an app with the same classic layouts.

What has changed is convenience: undo buttons, hints, automatic moves to the foundations. What has not changed is the core pleasure. You see a layout, you plan, and sometimes the deal simply will not cooperate.

What the history tells us

• Solitaire is old, but nobody knows exactly how old or who started it.
• Many of the best-known stories (Napoleon, the Klondike miners, the Canfield casino) are plausible but unproven.
• Windows in 1990 is when solitaire became universal, and the reason was a mouse tutorial.

Want something with a longer pedigree than the version you grew up with? Try the games in our types of solitaire games comparison. If you are returning to cards after a long gap, the beginner guide is a gentle refresher.

Sources

• Lady Adelaide Cadogan, Illustrated Games of Patience (first published 1874); a later edition is free on Project Gutenberg.
• Microsoft Solitaire (Wikipedia): Wes Cherry, Susan Kare, Windows 3.0.
• FreeCell (Wikipedia): Paul Alfille, PLATO, Baker's Game.
• Microsoft Plus! (Wikipedia): Spider Solitaire in Plus! 98.