Former US defence secretary Donald ‘Known Unknowns’ Rumsfeld has launched a new Solitaire app that was inspired by Winston Churchill.
During WWII, Churchill taught a dizzying variant of the card game to André de Staercke, a Belgian who had fled his country after the Nazis stormed in. Rumsfeld met de Staercke when they both worked at NATO in Brussels in the 1970s and learned the game.
Rumsfeld told Medium: “I can remember de Staercke sitting across from me on a plane somewhere over Europe playing the curious game, dizzying columns of miniature cards arrayed on the table between us. I asked him what he was playing and he proceeded to tell me the origin of the game he called Churchill Solitaire after the man we both very much admired. The diabolical rules make it the hardest game of solitaire and probably the most challenging and strategic game of logic or puzzle I’ve ever played.”
For the past two years Rumsfeld has been advising a team of developers to bring the game into the digital age. Churchill Solitaire involves using two decks of 52 cards. Instead of the traditional 7 rows of cards, there are 10. Instead of simply moving cards so that they fit back into single-suited piles from Ace to King, Churchill Solitaire includes an extra row of six cards - the Devil’s Six - that a player has to liberate as well.
Says the Donald: “Churchill Solitaire is not a game for everyone. It takes patience and perseverance, cunning and concentration, and strategy and sacrifice. It’s a card game that can frustrate even the most skilled player because a single move can make or break an entire game. A number of hands are simply unwinnable. But the most steadfast players will gamely soldier on to find their way to victory.”
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Rumsfeld claims that until a few years ago, there were probably a dozen or so people in the entire world who knew how to play this game, mostly members of his family. The game is free with in-app purchases for hints and freeplay. The platform is iOS for iPad and iPhone, with an Android version following later.
