Doumu: Solitaire

In 1826 a book came out in Moscow: a collection of card layouts known as grand-patiences, respectfully dedicated to all men of affairs. No author on the title page. Sixty layouts in three classes, and a plate of figures showing how the cards are set out. It is the oldest known book of patience rules in the world. In 1896 it was printed again — a second edition, thoroughly redone and enlarged, with fifty drawings in the text and fifteen more layouts. After that, for a hundred and thirty years, nothing. This app is the third edition. The layouts come from the books themselves and not from a later retelling. Both were read in the original: the 1826 scan from the National Electronic Library, the 1896 one from the Russian State Library. The drawings of 1896 turned out to be numbered exactly as the figures of 1826 — that is how the plate missing from the first edition was recovered, and that is why every table here is set out the way the book sets it out. The rules stay as they are written. Where the old text says nothing, or asks for something a phone has no reason to ask for, the app follows what a solitaire does today — and says so, in the rules of that layout. Every layout has its own page: the rules in full, and a scheme of the table — what stands where before the first move, and what each place is for. Cards are moved with a finger. Any move can be taken back, as many of them as you like, and a fresh deal is one tap away. The game says when it is over, and it tells the two kinds of end apart: no move is left at all, or moves are still there and yet no card will ever reach a foundation again. The layouts open one after another as they are made ready. The first of them — the one the book puts first — is in the app now. What is not in it No advertising. No in-app purchases, no subscriptions. No internet: the app does not even ask for the network permission, so it cannot send anything anywhere. No permissions at all, no registration, no accounts. No data collection. Your settings stay on your device.