Solitaire

Solitaire is about a single-player card game which consists of a layout of cards with a goal of sorting them in some manner. However, with a head to head race system it is possible to play the same games in competition. The game is most likely German or Scandinavian in origin. It became popular in France in the early 19th Century reaching England and America in the latter half. Patience was first mentioned in literature shortly after tarot layouts were developed circa 1765.

The term solitaire or patience is also used for single-player games of skill and focus using a set layout of tiles, pegs or stones rather than cards. These games include Peg solitaire and Shanghai solitaire. There are many different solitaire games, but the term "solitaire" is often used to refer specifically to the most well-known form, called "Klondike". There is a vast array of variations on the solitaire/patience theme, using either one or more decks of cards, with rules of varying complexity and skill levels. Many of these have been converted to electronic form and are available as computer games.

The first collection of solitaire card games in the English language is attributed to Lady Adelaide Cadogan through her Illustrated Games of Patience, published in about 1870 and reprinted several times. Other collections quickly followed such as Patience by E. D. Cheney, Amusements for Invalids by Annie B. Henshaw (1870), and later Dick's Games of Patience, published by Dick and Fitzgerald. Other books about solitaire written towards the end of the 19th century were by H. E. Jones (a.k.a. Cavendish), Angelo Lewis (a.k.a. Professor Hoffman), Basil Dalton, Ernest Bergholt, and Mary Whitmore Jones.