Solitaire review

Here I sit at work alone on Christmas eve. Everyone else got to go home early but I'm waiting for a final delivery that was supposed to have been here hours ago. What to do... solitaire.

I know I said I was taking a break over Christmas but I guess that this is my gift to my readers.

Solitaire is that time wasting game packaged into your windows basic games. It's so basic anyone could learn it quite easily. Actually I'm probably wasting my time reviewing it but that's kind of the point right now. I have nothing else to do right now.

In solitaire you use a basic poker deck of cards. Deal out 7 piles of cards. The first pile is one card high the second is two cards high and so on until the seventh is 7 cards high. All of the top cards of the piles are face up with the remainder of the piles being face down.

The point is to reveal all the cards. You do this by moving cards onto the next highest card of the opposite colour, red two on a black three, a black three on a red four etc. Make any moves you can after initial set up. After that the remaining cards in your hand are revealed by threes. These are piled on the side with only the top card of the pile being allowed to be moved.

Aces are a special card, these can be moved above the 7 piles and cards of the same suit may be moved up in sequential order. An ace of hearts gets the two of hearts etc.

Kings are special in that they are the only card that can be moved to a blanked pile. Once the last card of a pile is moved over it leaves an empty space. The king moves over and cards can be piled in order on it.

Solitaire is a great time wasting game to play by yourself. An old joke is that if you are ever lost you should pull out a deck of cards and play solitaire. When someone comes by to point out where to move cards you can ask them for directions. This is based on the fact that if you are playing solitaire someone almost always comes by to offer advice on how to play. Usually because they are looking to waste time too.

I recommend everyone should learn to play solitaire. It's a great exercise in problem solving and organizing. It could keep kids busy on a rainy day and kills time while waiting for a delivery.

Keep checking back. I don't intend to post next week but you never know. I might just have the oomph to do another.