solitaire, also called patience or cabale, family of card games played by one person. Solitaire was originally called (in various spellings) either patience, as it still is in England, Poland, and Germany, or cabale, as it still is in Scandinavian countries.
The terms patience and solitaire have been applied to indicate any one-player card-related activity, including building card houses, flipping cards into a hat, and arranging them into mathematical “magic squares.” However, the vast majority of card solitaires, reflecting the most usual understanding of the word, denote an activity whereby the player starts with a shuffled pack and attempts, by following a more-or-less complicated series of maneuvers specified by the rules, to get all the cards arranged in numerical order, often also separated into their component suits. Some games of this type, such as spite and malice, racing demon, and spit, are played competitively by two or more players, thus calling into question the suitability of the term solitaire.
The terms patience and solitaire have been applied to indicate any one-player card-related activity, including building card houses, flipping cards into a hat, and arranging them into mathematical “magic squares.” However, the vast majority of card solitaires, reflecting the most usual understanding of the word, denote an activity whereby the player starts with a shuffled pack and attempts, by following a more-or-less complicated series of maneuvers specified by the rules, to get all the cards arranged in numerical order, often also separated into their component suits. Some games of this type, such as spite and malice, racing demon, and spit, are played competitively by two or more players, thus calling into question the suitability of the term solitaire.
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