Guides

Four mechanics with longer shadows than this site

Klondike

Klondike is the solitaire most English-speaking players mean by “solitaire”. It is widely associated with the late-nineteenth-century Klondike gold rush in popular naming, and it became the default Windows solitaire in 1990, which is why draw-three and the seven-column layout feel familiar. Foundations by suit from ace to king, and alternating colours in the tableau, are the stable core. Brass Tableau on this site follows that core, not a house variant with extra jokers.

Matching pairs

Concentration — also called Memory or Pelmanism — is a card game in which players turn two cards and keep them if they match. Commercial boxed versions appeared in the mid-twentieth century; the mechanic is older as a parlour game. Timed computer versions add a clock; they do not change the idea that position, not chance on a reel, is what you are tracking. Fjell Pairs is that game with a rune set and a virtual-coin multiple for speed.

Higher or lower

Calling whether the next rank is higher or lower is a standard card comparison, used in pub games and television formats. The honest version states the remaining ranks (or, with replacement, the full set) and treats a tie as a loss or a separate call. Chrome Fruit uses a seven-step fruit ladder instead of a 13-rank deck so the cabinet matches its chrome-and-cherry setting, and it prints the chance of higher and lower on each card.

Mines on a grid

Minesweeper, shipped with Windows 3.1 in 1992, made a hidden-mine grid ordinary office software. The older idea — probing a field that contains hidden bombs — turns up in earlier computer games of the 1980s. Midway Sweep borrows the hidden-mine board and the choice to stop, then pays a multiple from the remaining safe fraction rather than asking you to flag every mine. It is not Microsoft’s game and does not use that name as a title.

What this page is not claiming

Harbour Play Room did not invent these forms. The settings (fjeld ice, fruit chrome, midway canvas, brassworks) are dressing. If a date above is the well-known public one and a specialist source disagrees on a first appearance, the mechanic still predates this website.