| Date: 11 April 2011, 22:12
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Introduction
Dipping Into Dictionaries is the name of one of my favourite solo games and I have just been playing it. I stopped when I reached page 402 of
Volume X of the Oxford English Dictionary (Sole - Sz) and discovered, to my great surprise, that there's a lot more to solitaire than ever I
imagined. Apparently, as well as being what I always thought it was, a solitaire can also be a recluse, a precious stone, a solitary beast of chase, a
Jamaican bird and a loose neck-tie of black silk or broad ribbon worn by men in the eighteenth century.
Naturally the solitaire that really concerns me — and you — is the game which can be played by one person'. The first usage of the word
with that meaning quoted in the O.E.D. comes in a letter from the novelist Horace Walpole, dated 1746. 'Has Miss Harriet found any more
ways at Solitaire?' he asks, almost in an aside, not realising that this innocuous question is putting a new word on the map - or at least into
the dictionary.
As you can tell, I have learnt a lot from page 402 of Volume X of the Oxford English Dictionary. (Apart from what's relevant to the matter in
hand, I'm delighted to have discovered that a soliquacious solisquious soliped is an uncloven hoofed animal that follows the sun talking to
itself!) Since I have learnt so much from the book I've just been reading, I very much hope that you will learn a thing or two from the book I've just
been writing.
Solo Games is intended as a comprehensive compendium of indoor games of all sorts and it is a subject I have warmed to because, at least as
far as games go, I have always been a bit of a loner. All my life team games have been anathema to me. Their full horror dawned on me a quarter of a
century ago, when I was ten and a pupil at a boys' boarding school in Kent. Twice a week during the winter term we were expected to play
football. Twice a week during the winter term I would invent colds and coughs and psychosomatic headaches to help me avoid the torture of the
soccer pitch. My finest hour came one particulary wet and windy afternoon when I pretended to have a severe stomach ache. The doctor was
summoned and took me seriously, so seriously in fact that within xii Introduction twenty-four hours I was in Canterbury General Hospital having my
one-hundred-per-cent-healthy appendix removed.
At my next school, a 'progressive' establishment called Bedales in Hampshire — famous for its distinguished parents (running from Oscar Wilde to Princess Margaret) rather than the achievements of its former pupils -1 might have hoped to be excused compulsory games. Not so.
The nightmare continued - for years. When at last, at the age of eighteen, I was allowed to leave the school rugby field for the very last time, I went
into the changing rooms, fell to my knees and thanked God that the years of team games were behind me. Indeed, so relieved and grateful was I,
that I gave my Maker a solemn promise: in return for His undertaking to excuse me from team games for the rest of my life, I promised never to
complain about anything else ever again. I have tried to keep my word.
I may sound somewhat fanatical—and on this subject perhaps I am— but my loathing of team games then has one advantage now: as a child,
though I didn't like playing games with others, I still liked playing games, so I made it my business to discover as many games for one player
as I could - and this book is the result of my solitary endeavours.
Although Walpole only started writing letters about Solitaire a little over two hundred years ago, people have certainly been playing solo
games for thousands of years. Dominoes (Chapter 3) and Fivestones (Chapter 4) are definitely pre-Christian in origin and the Chinese Tan-
gram (Chapter 6) may be too. In the book I have included games that have been around for generations - e.g. Dice, Marbles, Tiddlywinks, in
Chapter 4 - as well as games that are as modern as the electronic calculator (Chapter 7) and I have taken care to feature games from all over the
world, from California in the West to Canton in the Far East. The solitaire board game that is now generally known as Solitaire is French in origin,
but I have included games for players on both sides of the Channel since the French and English Solitaire boards are slightly different (Chapter
2).
Where games require boards they can usually be made very easily - often simply by being drawn onto a piece of paper or card - and for most
of the games that call for 'pieces', you will find that buttons or bottle-tops give as good a game as bone or carved ebony. Indeed with the games for
coins and matches (Chapter 5) their charm lies in the fact that they can be played anywhere anytime so long as you have a little loose change or a
box of matches to hand. And with the games in Chapter 8, all you need is a pencil and the back of an old envelope.
Inevitably pride of place has gone to Card Games (Chapter 1) because they are so popular — it is reckoned that in Western Europe 90 per cent of all households contain at least one pack of cards and there are probably over 250,000,000,000 decks in die United States - but I have
also tried to include a sprinkling of the unexpected, and alongside the many cerebral games there are a number that are simply silly (especially
in Chapters 9 and 10, Mental Games and Children's Games).
As organiser of the British National Scrabble Championships - I founded the contest in 1971 - and as a former European Monopoly Champion — who shame-facedly admits he came third in the World Championships in New York — I am clearly not averse to all indoor games for two or more, but I have come to the conclusion that I am really happiest when pitting my wits against the opponent I like best: myself.
This is a book for people who get on well with themselves. We all need to be or have to be alone at frequent moments in our lives - because
we're ill or we've been sent to bed early, because we live alone or our partner is taking the dog for a walk round the block, because we're on our
own in an airport lounge or on a train - and this book is designed to ensure that those moments are never dull. Its aim is to make patience a
positive pleasure, when once it was only a virtue.
Gyles Brandreth
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