a solitaire card game by Ingemar and Susanne Ragnemalm
Welcome to Solitaire House!
Solitaire House is a solitaire card game, with a number of different card games to choose from.
There are plenty of games of this kind, and some of them are very good. Thus, I think it is worth telling you what is special with this one:
ΓÇó Big, friendly cards, not just small icon-sized things.
ΓÇó You can pick games by double-clicking icons, not only by picking from a list of names in a menu (which is also possible). This makes it easier to find the right game.
ΓÇó It is put in a setting (a house) to give it a little bit more atmosphere. Most other card games are straight "desktop" games. Nothing wrong with that, but this is different.
ΓÇó It has most nice features any of the preceding games have had, like auto-save, multi-step undo and redo, highlighting of legal moves etc.
If this makes it a better game is up to you to decide. I personally think it does.
>Topic<Using Solitaire House
When you start the game, you get to the outside view. By clicking on the name plate, you can choose a player or add a new one. You can also use the Players menu. When your name is on the name plate, click on the door to enter.
You then get to the inside view. You will find the house cluttered with game icons. You can click-and-drag the icons to organize them, in order to help you remember which ones you like best, or which ones you havn't learned yet.
Double-click on a game icon to start that game.
You then get to the game view. This is a perfectly conventional solitaire card game view. Click-and drag cards to move them. When a card passes over a place where you may place it, the lower card highlights.
There are a number of extra icons in the game view: the timer, the rule book, the score panel and the tool panel, the latter with a new game button, suspend button and end game button. The rule book is activated by double-clicking. The buttons are activated with single clicks. The score panel will show the current score and the current high score. Note that some games does not display any score. You can choose to hide any of them by using the Options menu, if you rather use the menus or command key equivalents.
Undo and redo are available through the Edit menu.
Double-click on a card makes the game try to find an "obvious" move, like moving the card to the foundations (if there are any).
Some useful keyboard commands are available:
Return: tries to find any "obvious" move and performs it.
Escape: tries to find any "obvious" moves and performs them until no more "obvious" moves can be found. Useful for playing all cards on the foundations when you know that you have won the game!
A1234567890JQK: Highlights all cards of the specified value.
SHDC: Highlights all cards of the specified suit (S=spades, H=hearts, D=diamonds, C=clubs).
Space: Highlights all moveable cards.
>Topic<Trouble shooting
If you don't hear any music, make sure you have "QuickTime Musical Instruments" installed, as well as QuickTime! Music quality also varies with different Musical Instruments versions.
A note on memory: If you have an old Mac, the default 8 megs may seem like a whopping amount to reserve for a card game. Well, if you have a small screen and run in 256 colors or even less, it certainly is! You can safely reduce it. Likewise, if you have a very large screen and plenty of memory, you may want to give Solitaire House more memory in order to run it in full screen and thousands of colors.
A few examples:
800x600, thousands of colors: 8 megs. (Default setting.)
512x342, black-and-white: 1 meg. (Classic screen.)
640x480, 256 colors: 4.5 megs. (Typical low-end system a few years old.)
>Topic<Copyright notice and shareware info
Solitaire House 1.0.1 is © 1996-1998 by Ingemar and Susanne Ragnemalm. All rights reserved. All artwork are copyrighted and may not be reproduced or copied without permission.
Solitaire House 1.0.1 is distributed as shareware. It is copyrighted but freely distributable. If you use it beyond a reasonable evaluation period (about 2 weeks), you should pay the registration fee of $20 (or equivalent in other currencies). Once you register, you will get a registration code that will remove the shareware reminders. See the separate "Register" program.
If you can't use the Register program, for whatever reason, you can pay by ordinary mail, but please, never send checks! Small US checks are worthless in Sweden. Swedes can pay via giro. Norwegians, danes and finns can too, but there will be an extra fee from the bank. Please contact me for details.
Solitaire House 1.0.1 may be uploaded to online services such as Info-Mac and included on CD-ROM publications, with the following restrictions:
ΓÇó It should be unmodified, including the "Register" program.
ΓÇó It should be properly presented as shareware, i.e. that an additional fee is expected after an evaluation period.
ΓÇó Any fees charged should cover distribution costs only, that is printing, CD-ROM duplication, postage etc. You are not allowed to sell my program, but you can sell the sevice of distributing of it.
You can contact me by E-mail at ingemar@lysator.liu.se, or by ordinary mail at:
Ingemar Ragnemalm
Pl├╢jaregatan 73
S-58333 Link├╢ping
SWEDEN
E-mail is much preferred, especially for questions and suggestions.
>Topic<The games
The following games are included in Solitaire House (in alphabetical order):
Alias Smith & Jones.
Canfield.
Colorado.
Fifteens.
Fjortis.
Forty Thieves.
Golf.
Goodnight waltz.
Grandfather's Clock.
the Harp.
the Idiot.
Ingis' Intelligence Test.
the Intelligence Test.
Itsy Bitsy Spider.
King's Corner.
King's Corner (strict).
Klondike.
Klondike (strict).
Montana.
Monte Carlo.
Napoleon.
Piker.
Poker.
Pyramid.
Pyramid (small).
Reverse.
Seahaven Towers.
Spider.
Spiderette.
Summit Meeting.
Game characteristics:
Kind: What kind of game is it?
ΓÇó Build: "building" games, some very much in the same family as Klondike, while others are more original. However, the most original games are the ones not belonging to this cathegory.
ΓÇó Discard: Games where you remove cards.
ΓÇó Math: Card values are added to each other, or built with some distance other than 1.
ΓÇó Arrange: A catch-all for most other games. You don't build in sequences, and you don't discard, and you don't add, but rather arrange the cards to achieve some goal.
Complexity: Does the game require much thought?
Chance: Chance to win. Is the game often unsolvable, or is it often possible to win?
Decks: Number of decks used.
Game Kind Complexity Chance Decks
Alias Smith & Jones Arrange Medium High 1
Canfield Build Medium Low 1
Colorado Arrange Medium High 2
Fifteens Math Low Medium 1
Fjortis Math Low Medium 1
Forty Thieves Build Medium Medium 2
Golf Discard Low Low 1
Goodnight waltz Build Low Low 1
Grandfather's Clock Build Low High 1
The Harp Build Medium High 2
The Idiot Discard Low Low 1
Ingis Intelligence Test Build High Medium 1
The Intelligence Test Build High High 1
Itsy Bitsy Spider Build Medium High 1
King's Corner Math Low Medium 1
King's Corner (strict) Math Low Low 1
Klondike Build Medium Medium 1
Klondike (strict) Build Medium Low 1
Montana Arrange Low Medium 1
Monte Carlo Discard Low High 1
Napoleon Build High High 1
Piker Math High Low 1
Poker Arrange Low N.A. 1
Pyramid Math Low Low 1
Pyramid (small) Math Low Low 1
Reverse Arrange Low High 1
Seahaven Towers Build High Medium 1
Summit Meeting Build Low Medium 1
Spider Build High Low 2
Spiderette Build High Low 1
>Topic<Glossary
Foundations: The piles on which the cards should go to win the game. It is usually 4 or 8 piles, where you build from aces (worth 1) up to kings (worth 13).
Table: The table is the set of piles where you re-arrange cards, trying to find a way to move cards to the foundations. In Klondike, for example, the table is the seven piles that are delt from the start.
Hand: These are the cards that were left after the deal. You usually flip through them one or three cards at a time.
Waste: This is the pile to which you flip cards from the hand.
Follow suit: Cards build on each other must be of the same suit.
Alternating colors: When building in alternating colors, black cards go on red ones, and red ones on black.
Build up: A card may be put on a card that is the next lower one.
Build down: A card may be put on a card that is the next higher one.
>Topic<Synonyms
The following card games are in Solitaire House under a different name.
Aces High: see The Idiot.
Aces Up: see The Idiot.
Big Forty: see Forty Thieves.
Calculation: see Piker.
Canfield: Canfield is sometimes confused with Klondike.
Chinaman: see Klondike.
Demon: see Canfield or Klondike.
Devil's Own: see Canfield.
Dr Roosevelt at St Juan: see Forty Thieves.
Fascination: see Canfield or Klondike.
Firing Squad: see The Idiot.
Freecell: see Napoleon.
Gaps: see Montana.
Idiot's Delight: see The Idiot.
Klondyke: Spelled Klondike here.
Napoleon at St Helena: see Forty Thieves.
On The Edge: see King's Corner.
Pile of Twenty-Eight: see Pyramid.
Progression: see Piker.
Thirteen: see Canfield.
Triangle: see Klondike.
Many of these synonyms were submitted by Rick Holzgrafe. Thanks! If there are other synonyms, please let me know!
>Topic<Brief rules
Alias Smith & Jones
If you give me 25 random cards, how much would you bet that I can't make five full hands out of it? (A full hand, in this case, is any hand where all five cards are used, that is a full house, straight or flush.) Whatever you do, don't give me even odds. It is usually possible to form five full hands.
We learned this "trick" from the western TV series "Alias Smith & Jones". Remember it? Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry made some money on making bets like the one above - and of course they lost in the end, as usual.
This game is very unusual, since you can drag the 25 cards freely. When you have a full hand, you can double-click on one card that overlaps all the others and no other cards. If the combination is accepted, the cards are removed. When the table is cleared, you have won the game.
Canfield
The casino owner Mr Canfield is rumored to have sold decks for $50 to players, who then played this game once, and for every card they played on the foundations, the casino payed $5. The profit was substantial, about $20-$25 on the average.
Obviously, you rarely win this game. You build just like in many other solitaires, though you don't build from aces, but from a random card that is selected in the deal. There are two problems: you only have four piles to build on on the table, and you have a special pile with 13 cards that you must use to fill any free spaces.
Colorado
Using twenty waste piles and two decks, you build up from four aces and down from four kings.
Fifteens
Fifteen cards are delt as the table. Remove any set of cards lower than 10 that sums to 15, or a full quadruple of four tens, jacks, queens or kings.
Fjortis
Drag any two cards with a sum of 14 onto each other to remove them.
Forty Thieves
Forty Thieves uses two decks. Forty cards are delt into ten piles with four in each. You can move one card at a time. On the table, you can build down, following suit. Any card goes on a free space. The goal is to put all cards on the foundations.
Golf
Golf is a simple game, but which often offers surprisingly interesting gameplay, which makes it very fun to play. The goal is to remove all cards from the table by plaing them to the waste pile. A card may be played to the waste pile when it its value differs by one from the top card on the waste. When you can't play any cards to the waste, you may flip cards from the hand to the waste.
Goodnight Waltz
On the table, you can build both up and down. On the foundations you build up from ace, following suit. When you click on the hand, four new cards are delt on the table.
Grandfather's Clock
This is a rather easy game with a fun layout. Twelve cards are delt in a circle, as the foundations, and the rest of the desk in eight piles. On the table, you bay build in alternating colors. The goal is to move all cards to the foundations, building up, following suit.
The Harp
This game is best described as Klondike with two decks. You have ten piles on the table, and of course eight foundations.
The Idiot
Also known as Aces High. If two top cards on the table are in the same suit, you may remove the lowest one. Any cared may be played to an empty space. When you can't remove more cards (or just don't want to) you may put four more cards on the table, one of each pile. The goal is to end the game with only the four aces on the table.
You will rarely win this game. However, this is a game that improves a lot by using multi-step undo/redo. Not only will it increase your chance to win, but it also makes the game a lot more interesting. So, this is a game where you should not consider undoing moves to be cheating!
Ingis' Intelligence Test
This is my own variation of Intelligence Test. Intelligence Test is one of my long-time favourites, but I got a bit frustrated on the lack of options, especially in the first round where it often locks up immediately. I find this variation more challenging. The differences to the standard game is:
1) All cards are dealt to the table. The three free spacrs are left empty. This gives you a lot more freedom and no risk for an immediate lockup.
2) There is only one round.
The Intelligence Test
The Intelligence Test is game that, as the name implies, takes some thought to solve. You move one card at a time, following suit, building up on the foundations. You have three extra spaces, where only card can go. When you get stuck (and you tend to get stuck pretty soon), the cards are collected, pile by pile, and delt again without shuffling to start the second round. After the third round, the game is over. In other words, you may re-deal twice.
Hint: You will almost never win The Intelligence Test on the first deal. Instead, you should try to move low cards to the right, and high cards to the left, since the rightmost cards will be lowest after the re-deal. Winning at the second round is hard, but you can often win at the third round.
See also "Ingis' Intelligence Test".
Itsy Bitsy Spider
This is the least common of the two single-deck variations of Spider. I found this in a game book, "Att lägga patiens" (immediately after Spider, of course). The deal is like spider, in ten piles, though with only three cards in each pile. The big difference from SPider and Spiderette is that you don't deal one card on each pile when clicking on the hand, but rather flip through the hand just like in strict Klondike.
King's Corner
You may have seen a Mac implementation of this game named On The Edge, by John Stiles. You place cards until the table is full. Kings, queens and jacks must go in the designated spaces. When the table is full, you can remove any set of cards that add up to ten. When all twelve kings, queens and jacks are placed, you have won.
King's Corner (strict)
A more cut-throat version of King's Corner, where you lose immediately if you open an unplayable card.
Klondike
Klondike is one of the most popular solitaire card games - perhaps the most widely played of them all. This is the "popular" version, where you flip three cards at a time, and may flip through the hand any number of times. In the "strict" version (also included), you flip one card at a time and may only flip through the hand once!
Klondike (strict)
This is Klondike with the "strict" rules. The difference to "popular" Klondike is that
1) You turn one card at a time rather than three.
2) You may only flip through the hand once.
Montana
Arrange the cards into four full suits by moving cards between the four free spaces. This is a very popular game, almost as common as Klondike. It requires some searching for the best moves, but isn't too complex. You won't win it too often.
Monte Carlo
Deal 25 cards in a 5x5 square. Remove adjacent pairs. Move the cards to the left and upwards to fill the holes and fill out the free spaces from the hand.
Napoleon
All cards are dealt, open, to eight piles on the table. You may use four temporary spaces, and move one card at a time. You build down on the table, in alternating colors.
Piker
This fun game is also known as Calculation and Progression. On the first foundation, you build cards ONE higher than the previous. On the second foundation, you build cards TWO higher than the previous, on the third, THREE, and on the fourth, FOUR. On the table, you can play any card, but you can't move a card from the table aywhere but to the foundations.
Hint: The complete sequence for each foundation is:
A 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 J Q K
2 4 6 8 10 Q A 3 5 7 9 J K
3 6 9 Q 2 5 8 J A 4 7 10 K
4 8 Q 3 7 J 2 6 10 A 5 9 K
Poker
Put 25 cards in a 5x5 square, while trying to form as good poker hands both horizontally and vertically. You never "win" this game, just get better or worse score.
Pyramid
The icon was inspired by the Pyramid game by Phil Bush. When you can combine two cards to get a sum of 13, you may remove them. Kings count as 13, so they are removed by themselves. The goal is to clear the table.
Pyramid (small)
This is exactly like Pyramid, but with six rows rather than seven. Don't expect it to be a whole lot easier just because of that, though.
Reverse
Reverse is basically the 15-puzzle with cards. You can move any card to an empty adjacent space. The goal is to re-arrange the cards to the following order:
J 10 9 8
7 6 5 -
4 3 2 1
Seahaven Towers
All cards are dealt, open, to ten piles on the table. You may use four temporary spaces, and move one card at a time. You build down on the table, following suit.
Spider
Some people consider this the most interesting and challenging solitaire of them all. I don't know if that is true, but it is interesting and rather different from the rest.
There are no foundations. Instead, you build downwards on the ten piles on the table. You don't have to follow suit, but when you do, you may move entire suits in one move. When you have a complete suit from ace to king, you can double-click it to remove it.
Spiderette
This is one of the two single-deck variations of Spider. This variation is the one I've seen in other computer solitaires. The deal is like Klondike, in 7 piles, and all the gameplay is just like Spider.
This is a pretty hard game to win. If you want an easier kind of Spider, try Itsy Bitsy Spider.
Summit Meeting
The big difference from ordinary building games is that in this game, you are allowed to move any pile of open cards, regardless of suit and value.
>Topic<Other solitaire card games
There are plenty of other solitaire card games for the Mac. Every major shareware game CD tends to have a dozen or two. Among the better ones are Mike Casteel's games (Klondike and others), which are some of the most long-living products in Mac game history, and Eric Snider's games (Montana etc).
Games with several solitaire games in one are not quite as common. They include the following:
SpoydWorks Solitaire by Steve Boyd.
11 games plus 15 more for paying users. Shareware, $25. (Version 1 had 6 games and a fee of $5.)
This is a pretty good game, but is starting to look a bit dated. The graphics look more like a B/W game that has been colorized than a real color game. Also, it lacks some of the features of the top-notch games, like multi-step undo/redo and highlighting of cards as the dragged card pass over them.
Solitaire Till Dawn by Rick Holzgrafe.
30+ games. Shareware, $20.
This is definitely the best of the shareware solitaire games (at least if you don't count Solitaire House). Lots of games, good graphics, a good set of features, and well documented. Version 2.1 was pretty buggy, but version 3 works better, and moves the game up to 30 games. It is better than most commercial alternatives.
Eric's Ultimate Solitaire by Eric Snider.
1-2 games in the demos, 23 in full game. Commercial, $44.
Stupid name ΓÇö I can't trust anything with "super", "awesome" or "ultimate" in the name, but it still is a fine game. I havn't tried the full game, only the demo (one game) and sampler (2 games), but these demos are impressing. If the real thing is half as good (and I understand it is even better) then it is excellent. A new version recently appeared with music and 6 new games.
Solitaire Antics by Ant Software.
21 games with 3 rule variants each. Commercial, $25.
The box says "The coolest solitaire gave ever". I can't agree to that. Its strongest points are that you can paste in just about any graphic you like, and that it shows silly animations. The actual game playing is left behind, with no helpful features to speak of. The lack of card highlighting and multi-step undo are fatal. Most competitors are a lot better, including shareware and even freeware.
Hardwood Solitaire II by Silver Creek.
1 game in demo, 6 in full game. Commercial, $25.
The strongest point of this game is its extremely pretty graphics. Yes, extremely! Alas, that's all it has. With only 6 games, and remarkably little helpful features (multi-step undo, but that's about it), it is better for impressing bypassers than actually playing.
Solitaire Royale by Brodie Lockard.
8 games and 3 children's games. Commercial.
This is an old game from 1987, the oldest multi-game solitaire I know for the Mac. At that time, it may have been a good game, but today it is completely outdated. It is in B/W, is rather awkward to use, but has a "tour" mode that is rather charming, and bigger cards than most. I have heard about a color version, but never seen it.
Card shell by Ralph S Sutherland.
7 games (separate applications sharing a common graphics file). Freeware.
This is the best of the freeware options. Excellent graphics ΓÇö if not overworked. The buttons for compacting and expanding piles is a fine solution to the problem of visibility versus space. It even has multi-step undo and auto-save. Incredible for a freeware game set!
There are some drawbacks though. The card animation feels a bit strange (cards disappear and then reappear). The names of the games are 100% non-standard, so you have to rename them or relearn. (For example, Klondike is called "The Chance".)
MacPatience by Niklas Frykholm.
5 games. $5 shareware (fee also covers other shareware).
Cheap, but a bit too simple in the competition. No "luxury" features to speak of. It would need at least some statistics/high scores.
Card Table by Anthony Theisen
3 games. Freeware.
Free, but only three games and very small cards makes this a keeper only if you just don't want to pay ΓÇô and even then, I'd pick Card Shell instead.
Quick overview:
#: Number of different games.
Cost: The price (for the full version if appropriate)
Color: Has color graphics?
B/W: Does it work on an SE with System 6.0.7? (B/W graphics, non-color QuickDraw, System 6. A "no" is OK, but it shouldn't crash ΓÇô a good test on whether it has been carefully programmed.)
Full: Full card drag? Most games without full drag drag outlines instead.
HL: Highlight of legal moves as you pass over them?
U/R: Multi-step undo/redo
Save: Save game feature.
# Cost Color B/W Full HL U/R Stat Save
SpoydWorks 11+15 $25 Yes No Yes No No Yes Auto
Sol. Till Dawn 30+ $20 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Solitaire Antics 21 $25 Yes Crash Yes No No No Yes
Hardwood Sol. 6 $25 Yes No Yes No Undo Yes No
Solitaire Royale 11 N/A No Yes Yes No No Yes Yes
Card shell 7 Free Yes Crash Yes No Undo Yes Auto
MacPatience 5 $5 Yes Yes No No No No No
Card Table 3 Free Yes No Yes No No No No
and finally
Solitaire House 30 $20 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Auto
>Topic<Credits
Programming: Ingemar Ragnemalm.
Graphics: Ingemar and Susanne Ragnemalm.
Music: Niklas Hellgren.
Testers: Brian Barnes, Tom B Wilson, Leo Breebaart, Bo Ragnemalm, Eva Ragnemalm, Carl Hoeger, Lyman Green, Edward Garbacz, João Pinto, Niklas Hellgren…
Music routines using QuickTime by Apple.
Graphics routines using the Sprite Animation Toolkit library by myself.
Help system by Cary Torkelson
UserDITL layout manager by Folke S├╢derstr├╢m
Some sound effects from the "World FX" collection by best service.
Thanks to Rick Holzgrafe for providing me with more synonyms for some games and other information about the games.
Thanks to Christer "Chrisp" Pettersson for finding and reporting the only significant bug reported since the release. (The bug was in Pyramid, and is now fixed!)
Sources for the game rules:
I have primarily used the following three books, all in swedish:
"Kortoxen" by Einar Werner and Tore Sandgren.
"Att lägga patiens" by Tore Sandgren, a swedish version of the danish book "Kabaledjævelen".
"Lägga patiens" by Svend Carstensen, swedish translation of the danish book "Den store kabalebog".
I have, of course, used the english names for the games, made the best translations in cases where I don't know any english name, and double-checked with the other solitaire card games on the Mac that we agree on the rules and names.
