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Why Windows Solitaire Eats So Much Time
An anonymous reader writes "This article suggests that Windows Solitaire may be the most-often played computer game. It's not so much an article about Solitaire, but rather an article about Windows and human nature and socialization. If you play FreeCell, there's a interesting paragraph about its inventor." Can Solitaire really eat up more hours than have been sacrificed to Tetris?
Then you, sir, have never actually played the more obscure variants which have addressed this problem. The Victorians mastered the art, and created a whole spectrum from pure luck to 100% solvable.
Windows has included the now famous Klondike variant. However, if you're a skill maven, look up the Spider family of variants which were always my favorites. I think I even saw a Windows port somewhere too. (If not, it's a snap to program them.)
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Windows Vista (some versions) now comes with a quite decent Chess game.
-David
-David
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
Does anybody have any ideas on what's next?
:) how it tracks your game stats over time. Besides, who doesn't like going back and playing games from the Windows 3.1 era? :)
Another version of Solitaire that I play a lot of is TriPeaks. An early version was shipped with the now ancient Windows Entertainment Pack and you can still grab a copy of the original game (near the bottom of the page or direct link and manual). It's a great break from normal (Klondike) Solitaire because you're trying to accumulate points and streaks instead of just beating a clock. It's also pretty pretty cool (and depressing
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
Mac OS X has had Chess for YEARS!!
Windows versions starting with Windows ME have had Spider solitaire included with the OS (that is, if this is what you were talking about).
Actually you CAN get better game hands by exiting and restarting freecell. You don't -have- to open and close it, you can just hit F2 or select new game. If you look in the title bar it will say FreeCell Game #(1-100000). It only has 1000000 possible games, so if they restart FreeCell it changes to one of those hands, some being easier than others. Alternatively they could just write down one of their favorite hands and press F3 to enter said hand number. Oh, I've played FreeCell maybe.. three times in my life, and that was on win95.
If you had 10 different accounts (twitter/Erris/gnutoo/Mactrope/inTheLoo/westbake/willeyhill/Odder/etc) I'd probably mod you down on sight too.
I don't know why Windows still includes games, but I do know what Solitaire is awfully good for: education.
All the computer-illiterate people I've taught found Solitaire an invaluable aid in learning how to use the mouse.
While to us geeks, the mouse is a natural extenstion of the hand, computer newbies have a really hard time with it; instead of looking at the screen, they look at the mouse, and left and right click are higher math. With Solitaire, they get something unimportant, yet interesting to look and click at; the game absorbs them and they forget about the mouse in the hand. Minesweeper is also great, but for advanced newbies -- after they've learned the basics of mouse usage, they can achieve precision playing Minesweeper.
For that reason, I use similar games under Linux as well when introducing newbies to the computer. First learn how to use the keyboard and the mouse, then we can get on with some real work. I found there was no use in teaching people advanced concepts when they still lose their way on the input devices.
Kind of like teaching aphasiacs the finer points in grammar.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Andy
For amusement, pick game number -1, or -2 (yes, those are negatives). They'll screw up your stats good and proper.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
All the computer-illiterate people I've taught found Solitaire an invaluable aid in learning how to use the mouse. When discussing the bundled games with the IBM OS/2 people (back when), the consensus was indeed that the purpose of those little games was to teach mouse usage. I too have found through the years that they work pretty well in this regard.
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