Solitaire
genre of solitaire card games
Solitaire, patience, or card solitaire refer to a genre of card games whose common feature is that the aim is to arrange the cards in some systematic order or, in a few cases, to pair them off in order to discard them. Most are intended for play by a single player, but there are varieties for two or more players.
Genre names
'Patience' is the earliest recorded name for this type of card game in both British and American sources. The word derives from the games being seen as an exercise in patience.
Although the name solitaire became common in North America for this type of game during the 20th century, British games scholar David Parlett argues that there are good reasons for preferring the name 'patience'. Firstly, patience refers specifically to card games, whereas solitaire may also refer to games played with dominoes or peg and board games. Secondly, any game of patience may be played competitively by two or more players.
American games authors Wood and Goddard state that "Patience is any game played with playing cards in which the object is to arrange the cards... in some systematic order." They note that "there are excellent games of Patience for two or more players; but most... are designed for one player" and that "Solitaire...properly applies to any game that one player can play alone." In practice, in North America the name 'solitaire' is often used totum pro parte to refer to single-player card games, although sometimes the term 'card solitaire' is used for clarity.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2056928. The Library of Congress control number is sh85124668. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Solitaire” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.