Playing Patience
If the above view is familiar to you, it probably means that you are have played, and perhaps still play, the one-person game called Solitaire or, as I was taught to call it, Patience. You may, like me, even have an electronic version of it on one or more of your devices.
I was introduced to this pastime by my mother. She was a devotee of the game though she, of course, played it with a deck of real playing cards. I don’t think that electronic versions of the game were ever available in her lifetime.
When I was very young, we would even play Patience together, my mother dealing out the cards and going through the pack (always in threes) and I turning over the cards as they were revealed.
Later, I played Patience by myself. When I eventually acquired a smartphone, it seemed quite natural to download an app of the game and play with that.
I play Patience often – probably much too often. There is something addictive about the game. It requires a minimum of intellectual effort but needs a certain amount of attention or you start missing possible moves.
I sometimes awake in the night with some trouble or other on my mind and find it hard to sleep again. Then I play Patience. As it’s on my iPhone, it has its own illumination so I don’t need to disturb Tigger by turning on the light.
Playing Patience usually does the trick: it calms me down and I start feeling sleepy again.
I also play Patience sometimes during the day but I try to limit it to times when I have a few minutes to spare between other activities otherwise I risk spending scandalous amounts of time on it. Addictive, as I said!
Do you also have a pastime that helps to calm you?
SilverTiger at home and abroad 
Hello, I’m quite addicted to The Independent cryptic crossword. The page also has a version of Patience called, I know not why, Golf Solitaire. Have you tried that one?
BTW, the first time I became aware of the word “Solitaire” was through the epomymous song by Andy Williams. What a voice!
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Clumsily paraphrasing Groucho Marx, I would say that “Any crossword simple enough for me to be able to do it is too simple to be worth my doing it!”
No, I am not acquainted with Golf Solitaire.
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I tend to play Patience using an app called (originally) Pysol. It’s no longer supported but a fan version called PysolFC is available. Not sure if it’s available for Apple products, though.
There are hundreds of variants even within the app (which I have installed on my Windows 7 laptop and on my Linux installation, as well as on my Android phone/research device).
Since the game is timed, I have tuned the settings so that if I’m fortunate I can almost always complete a game (one that can be solved; not all can) in under 2 minutes. My fastest has been under 1 minute but that’s exceptionally rare.
When I’m working on one of the machines and I need a mental break from what I’m doing, a quick PysolFC session takes my focus elsewhere just long enough to allow me to return to the task in hand with at least something of a second wind.
On all my installations my ratio of solved to abandoned is generally 3:1 or greater. Not sure whether that’s good or bad, but who cares? 🙂
Always looking to prevail,
Peter in FtL
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It sounds as though you are a Patience athlete compared with my status as a bumbling amateur!
It’s consoling to see that others play the game, like me, to relax and de-stress.
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