![]() You’re taking random elements and trying to put them together in a pleasing way, to make order out of chaos. Like writing, it’s entirely private, the exertion is purely cerebral you’re playing against yourself, against your previous best, against the law of averages and the forces of chance. You’re sitting at the same desk, working with the same keyboard and monitor. It even feels a little like writing, only more relaxing. I know maybe a dozen writers hooked on computer solitaire. Laying them out required space: a dining table, a desk. The cards were a problem: 52 slips of paper conspiring to hide in the couch cushions or at the bottom of my toy basket. I could play whenever and wherever I wanted. No need to persuade a friend to play or explain the boring rules, no hard feelings when someone won or lost, no lessons required, no costly equipment to badger my parents into buying. Its advantages over other games were obvious, even then. It’s more that the pleasures of solitaire remind me of what I used to like about smoking. When I gave up smoking, it wasn’t because I’d replaced it with the pleasures with solitaire. As a reward for having completed a task, as a mini-holiday from everyday stress, as a means of improving one’s mood without a doctor’s prescription, the game offers many of the same benefits as cigarettes, only it’s cheaper and doesn’t have the harmful effects of tar and nicotine. When friends tell me that they are trying to give up smoking, I suggest they take up solitaire.
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