Klondike Solitaire

I have three card games on my phone. I used to have four. The one I've had the longest, since 2008, is Klondike Solitaire.

Who hasn't played this? It's standard on most devices.

Microsoft used to bundle their own version of it with every copy of Windows, going way back to the 1990s. I remember staff playing it on their screens during their lunch breaks. I didn't, not then, but after I retired in 2005 I tried it out on my own home desktop computer, and then played a mobile version - still by Microsoft - when I bought a Pocket PC organizer in 2008. By then I was hooked. It became part of my bedtime routine to play as many games as necessary to get me three wins. Usually five or six games, sometimes less.

You couldn't lose at my 'Three-win' Solitaire! All you had to do was plug away at it until you'd won three games, then call it a day. I celebrated each victory with an exaggerated thumbs-up gesture. That became such an ingrained habit that it was very hard to resist doing when I travelled on a train, if I were playing Klondike Solitaire to while away the journey. I must have occasionally got some odd looks.

Then in 2012 I switched to a smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S2, and had to find a new version of this game. I found the one by Softick, and have stuck with it ever since.

It has an attractive and very clear interface, with plenty of customising options. It's definitely a challenging game of Klondike, but not too hard to win, which I do roughly half the time.

When you win, two endearing things happen. There's a burst of clapping from a hidden crowd of spectators, one of whom shouts 'Bravo, bravo!'; and then the Kings start to cascade from the completed bases, followed by the Queens, then the Jacks, and so on - all very pretty indeed! I play a little subsidiary game here: I try to tap the green baize (to set up the next game) just before the forth King bounces off the screen. As these Kings move fast, some nice judgement is called for.

This is what Softick's version of Klondike Solitaire looks like.

Here, I'm not long into a game.

Same game, but later on. It seems to be developing nicely. It's always a good thing to get all the Aces and Kings out. That usually promises a win.

Now it's clear that I'm going to win...

...and I have! I hear Bravo, bravo, and a burst of applause.

Next, this happens. Rather fast. A waterfall of cards.

So I tap the green baize on the screen, and this will set me up for another game. But first, this panel appears:

Hmm. I'm rated better than 74% of all the other players! They must be pretty duff.

In the past I have been rated as better than 80% of all the other players, but more recently the developers have toughened up the game, to make it less easy, and so I don't do quite as well as I might have a few years ago. But the stats tell me that I still win 49% of the time. 

You don't want to play a game that's too hard. I tried another version of Klondike Solitaire when I got my Microsoft Surface Book laptop in 2016. It was called Klondike Planet. This was a very difficult game to win. When you did - say 10% of the time - you did however get a spectacular reward. The card table slowly tilted away as music surged and came to a spectacular crescendo. A great pay-off. But it happened way too infrequently to compensate for the grind of all those lost games. In the end I gave up and uninstalled it. It was graphically (and sonically) more adventurous than Softick's game, but much less satisfying to play. I didn't feel I had a sporting chance.

Back to Softick's Klondike Solitaire. One of the nice things you can do is put a custom design on the back of the pack of cards you play with. The green-blue gargoyle I have put on the back of my pack is in fact nice old Mr Punch, and comes from this 2010 photo:

It's a wooden figure that was standing in front of a shop called Mr Punch's Market, at the corner of Bell Street and Mustons Lane in the north Dorset hill town of Shaftesbury - one of my favourite places, with associations for me going back to 1975. I have stayed there, twice; in fact I had my honeymoon night there in 1983; but mostly I know Shaftesbury from a great many day visits spread over more than four decades, most recently last year. It still has an allure, still draws me, and in these lockdown days I yearn to return there more than ever. 

As an aside, for as long as I remember Shaftesbury had a Chinese take-away called Yuk Wah, also in Bell Street, but closer to the town centre. Perhaps 'Yuk!' was what you said when you looked at the food; and 'Wah!' was the cry of pain after eating it. No, I jest unfairly, like Mr Punch might. 'Yuk Wah' is probably Cantonese for 'Extreme Heavenly Pleasure'. 

Anyway, this figure. I've obviously altered the original colours. You can see him as he really was in a  crop from the centre of this 2009 picture:

Dull red and washed-out blue? I got in close, and took a photo that I knew I would alter on the laptop to much more striking colours. And to my mind, a vivid green Mr Punch is a definite improvement on that rather anaemic version outside the shop. And perfect for a pack of playing-cards. 

Yes, that's the way to do it!