To celebrate Microsoft Solitaire's 25th anniversary, Microsoft is holding an internal tournament with the game and will open up the competition to the public.
The public will get a chance to see how well they stack up against the best Solitaire players who work for the company that computerized the game. The public side of the competition opens up in June and will include five popular versions of Solitaire.
"From Klondike to FreeCell to Spider, TriPeaks and Pyramid game modes, you'll be challenged to bring your best to defeat our best," says Microsoft. "Are you up to the challenge? Get your Solitaire game on today."
Based on the game of patience, which is more of a genre of games, Microsoft Solitaire was developed to help new Windows users learn just that: patience. The patience games can be played with cards or pegs and are all meant for one person.
Microsoft Solitaire, developed by intern Wes Cherry in 1989, was released to help Windows users get comfortable with the elements of the operating system's graphical users, such as the drag-and-drop procedure. Of note: Susan Kare, who created Apple's iconic logo, designed the deck of cards in Microsoft Solitaire.
Cherry himself used the development of Solitaire to learn the ins and outs of the Windows OS, but the intern was never paid any royalties for the program -- and that program is now one of the most installed pieces of software in the world.
Microsoft Solitaire was first released for Windows 3.0 back in 1990 and has been included in every Windows OS, except Windows 8. However, the game will once-again be pre-installed with the release of Windows 10.
Today, Cherry has moved onto working apples, the fruit. He runs Dragon's Head Cider with his family and only programs on the side now. And 25 years later, the legacy of his internship lives on.
"Suppose a business said everyone on the sales force was getting a free deck of cards so that when they get bored they can play solitaire," author and technologist Clifford Stoll told Time in 1998 interview. "Not going to happen, right? But if you give everyone on the sales force a $2,000 computer, you know they're going to play some solitaire because it's the second or third most common program run."
