Actually, Solitaire is not a game, but a training program designed to familiarize users with the handling of a mouse – this is how Microsoft founded the card sorting game integrated in Windows 3.0.

Since 1990 Solitaire has been lurking on hard drives and is only waiting for a weak moment from the user. When the afternoon gets long and your mind wanders, you may succumb to the temptation to practice using the mouse again. You can’t do that often enough.

Microsoft estimates that more than a billion Windows PCs shipped with Solitaire preinstalled. The seemingly harmless sorting of cards turned out to be the perfect entry-level drug with its treacherous “Just one more try” addictive effect. It’s always just a double click away: Come on, just ten minutes, that’s good, you can do it before the conference call starts. The computer may be at the reception, in the bookkeeping or in the executive suite, but you are nowhere safe from Solitaire.

Intern at work The devil’s stuff was programmed by a student named Wes Cherry, who did an internship at Microsoft in the summer 1988. He wrote Solitaire because he had already had a lot of fun with a similar solitaire game on the Macintosh and wanted a Windows version of it. A Microsoft manager became aware of the finger exercise and suggested adding it to the Windows 3.0 software package.

Cherry was not paid for it, he was only given a PC to correct bugs. You can do it with interns. Maybe Microsoft will at least send him a free t-shirt: Zum 30. For the first time there is solitaire merchandising for the 50th birthday.

30 Fans had to wait years for an official Solitaire T-shirt. Microsoft also sells coffee mugs for its big birthday.

(Image: Microsoft)

Cherry answers questions about the economic damage caused by Solitaire mischievously by pointing out that one year after the delivery of Windows 3.0 there was only one There was a recession. Worse was averted: Originally, Cherry’s Solitaire had a boss key, the actuation of which quickly hid the shameful little game. Its removal at Microsoft’s behest taught an entire generation to use the Alt + Tab key combination reflexively. Otherwise, the fate of Edward Greenwood threatened: He was 2006 fired by the then New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg just because he spotted a game of solitaire on Greenwood’s screen . The Bloombergs of this world are just sad characters who don’t get the uplifting feeling of sorting cards.

Too difficult for Bill Gates In the original Solitaire from 1990 is the game variant Klondike, which can also bring unsolvable card distributions. Today the Solitaire Windows Collection also features four other types of solitaire and amenities such as a hint function. That should please the prominent test player Bill Gates, who once complained that the first version was too difficult. In any case, the desire for solitaire is unbroken: an average 30 millions of games are played every day with the Solitaire Collection. All of them, of course, only in their free time.

The PC game year 1990 brought us classics such as Monkey Island, Railroad Tycoon or Wing Commander. But no other title was played as often as this Trojan horse from Windows 3.0. Succumbing to your temptations was the best that could happen to you on some workday. Those who are confronted by uncomprehending superiors refer to the old Microsoft argument