Minesweeper and Solitaire on the Office Computer

Solitaire came free with Windows 3.0 in 1990, and Minesweeper joined in 1992. Both were meant to teach the mouse, and both ate up countless work hours.

current mood: procrastinatingcurrently listening to: ♫ the cards bouncing across the screen

Written by Claire Donovan · October 9, 202656k: ~1 min

Solitaire and Minesweeper were the free games that came with Microsoft Windows, and for decades they were on almost every PC in homes, schools and offices. Solitaire arrived with Windows 3.0 in 1990, and Minesweeper joined the lineup in Windows 3.1 in 1992. Partly, it was there to teach people how to use a mouse by dragging cards around. Both games ended up being played billions of times, often by people who were supposed to be working and had a spreadsheet open in the other window for show.

An intern made Solitaire

Windows Solitaire was written by Wes Cherry, who made it as a summer intern at Microsoft in 1988. It was a version of Klondike, the card game where you build stacks down from King to Ace in alternating colors and try to move every card up to the four foundation piles.

The cards were designed by Susan Kare, the artist who had also designed early icons for the Apple Macintosh. Her card backs, including the castle, the fish and the palm tree on the beach, became some of the most familiar pictures on any computer.

Cherry's original version even had a "boss key," a shortcut that hid the game and showed a fake spreadsheet. Microsoft took it out before release, which tells you what they expected people to do with it.

Why did Windows come with Solitaire?

Windows came with Solitaire partly to teach people how to use a mouse. In 1990, many people had never used one. Dragging a card from one pile to another taught them how to click, hold and drop without any manual. It also made a new kind of computer feel friendly and less like a machine for experts.

It worked. Solitaire shipped with every version of Windows from 1990 until Windows 8 in 2012, and it has probably been installed on more than a billion computers. Microsoft's own tracking once ranked it among the three most used programs on Windows.

Minesweeper

Minesweeper first came out in 1990 in the Microsoft Entertainment Pack, a set of games you bought separately. The original was written by Curt Johnson, and Robert Donner brought it to Windows. In 1992, it replaced the game Reversi as one of the free games in Windows 3.1.

The game was a grid of gray squares, with mines hidden under some of them. You clicked a square to open it. If it was a mine, the game was over. If it wasn't, a number told you how many mines touched that square.

Using those numbers, you worked out where the mines were and marked them with a right-click flag. The little yellow face at the top smiled, gasped while you held the mouse down and put on sunglasses when you won.

There were three sizes. Beginner was a small 9 by 9 grid, Intermediate was 16 by 16 and Expert was a wide 30 by 16 grid with 99 mines. Plenty of people never tried Expert. Others spent years chasing their best time on it and got stopped by a 50/50 guess in the last corner.

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The bouncing cards

Winning at Solitaire came with a reward that people still talk about. When you finished, the cards jumped off the foundation piles one by one and bounced across the screen, leaving trails behind them. For a lot of kids this was the real prize, and some people won just to watch it again. Losing three games to see the cards fly once felt like a fair price.

There were also settings to play with. You could draw one card at a time or three, turn on Vegas scoring to play for pretend money and pick a new card back. Every office worker had a favorite card back, and changing it felt like redecorating your cubicle.

The game at work

Because they came on every computer, these games became the unofficial break room of the 1990s and 2000s. Somebody always had a card game minimized at the bottom of the screen. Some companies even removed the games from work computers to keep people on task, though the inbox had its own distractions, like chain emails.

At home, it was the same. Your parents played Solitaire while the internet dialed up, and Minesweeper was what kids played when the family computer didn't have anything else on it. If you had Encarta and Oregon Trail on the same machine, you probably remember fighting over it.

Flowers instead of mines

In 1999, a group called the International Campaign to Ban Winmine complained that Minesweeper made light of land mines, which hurt and kill real people around the world. They suggested replacing the mines with flowers. Some versions of Windows in other languages later did exactly that, calling the game Flower Field.

When Windows Vista came out, Minesweeper was redesigned and came with a Flower Garden option, so you could play with flowers instead of mines.

Are Solitaire and Minesweeper still on Windows?

Solitaire is still on Windows as Microsoft Solitaire Collection, which came out in October 2012 with Windows 8. It includes Klondike, FreeCell, Spider and other modes. Minesweeper was taken out of Windows 8 and moved to the app store as a free download with ads.

In 2019, Microsoft Solitaire was added to the World Video Game Hall of Fame at The Strong museum in Rochester, New York. By its 30th birthday in 2020, Microsoft said more than 35 million people were still playing it every month.

Which game was yours?

Then there was the small stuff: right-clicking to plant a flag and hoping you were right, the little face with sunglasses, and Hearts and FreeCell waiting in the same folder.

Vote: Which did you play more?

SolitaireorMinesweeper

You'll need a free crib to vote.

Small games, long breaks

These games proved that a game didn't have to be big to take over your afternoon, the same lesson flash games at lunch taught a few years later. FriendCrib has its own little time wasters, like quizzes and the Question of the Day. Get a crib and take your break there. The boss key is up to you.

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