Donald Rumsfeld, who died last month at age 88, is best remembered for serving as secretary of defense under Gerald Ford (1975-77) and again under George W. Bush (2001-06).
Lesser known fact: That made him both the youngest and the oldest person to hold that office.
Even a lesser known fact: Rumsfeld helped design a computer version of a solitaire game – and he did it when he was 83 years old. The original game uses two decks of cards and was said to be a favorite pastime of English Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Hence the name: Churchill Solitaire.
The game is available as an app for Android and Apple smartphones in the Google Play and Apple Store. It can also be played on a desktop computer or tablet. (Or played with two decks of cards. Rules can be found on this link: www.tinyurl.com/ChurchillSol)
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The two decks make it different from Klondike, the solitaire variation familiar to most Americans. And while Klondike has a play field of seven columns, Churchill has 10 columns across the board. The object is the same: Arrange cards in sequentially descending numbers, alternating red-and-black, while moving all eight aces to the home row so cards on the playing field can be moved to the home row in their correct suite and order.
As the cards are being dealt to set up the play field, six cards are also dealt into a separate pile called “the Devil’s six.” These cards must all be played directly to the ace piles in the home row and can’t be used on the playing field.
Rumsfeld learned of Churchill Solitaire in the early 1970s while serving as President Nixon’s Ambassador to NATO in Belgium.
There he met Andre de Staercke, a senior Belgian diplomat at NATO headquarters.
In an interview when the app emerged in 2016, Rumsfeld remembered:
“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, and the diabolical rules that make it the hardest game of solitaire — and probably the most challenging and strategic game of logic or puzzle — I’ve ever played.”
Rumsfeld said the game nearly went extinct. “Up until a few years ago, there were probably a dozen or so people in the entire world who knew how to play this game. These were mostly people I taught the game to …”
One of the people who learned the game from Rumsfeld was Keith Urbahn, Rumsfeld’s chief of staff at the Defense Department. Urbahn later formed Javelin, a literary agency. He and Rumsfeld eventually hit on the idea of them working together to bring Churchill Solitaire to the app market.
Whether Churchill actually played this particular game is left open for debate. The publishing company said he did “to the best of our knowledge.” Churchill kept copious notes on his life, and there are mentions of a French card game called bezique. It however, is a trick-taking game for two players, not a solitaire game.
The solitaire game is indeed tough to win. Expert players win about one in four games, according to Javelin’s Urbahn. The app is free to download, although players can purchase packets of hints and undos, or upgrade to the premium play for $5.
Proceeds go to The Rumsfeld Foundation “in support of its military charity partners, totaling over $121,000 contributed” as of April 2020, the foundation website noted.
Playing Churchill Solitaire does not necessarily a great strategist make. A review of the game by David Von Drehle when the game was released in 2016 had this paragraph: “The surprise is that Rumsfeld’s game is a test of strategy, based on a favorite pastime of Winston Churchill. What Adam Sandler is to Shakespearean acting, what Melissa McCarthy is to Bolshoi ballet, Donald Rumsfeld is to Churchillian strategy.”
Like the man said: Know when to fold ’em. Some hands, you just can’t win.
Lonnie Brown can be reached at LedgerDatabase@aol.com.
