By Online Solitaire Free Editorial Team · Editorial Standards
Solitaire is played everywhere — but it has different names, different favorite variants, and different cultural meanings depending on where you go. Here is a global tour of the game.
"Patience" remains the standard term across Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and much of the Commonwealth. British patience traditions run deep — the Victorian era produced dozens of named patience variants, many of which survived into the digital age and are now playable online.
In France, solitaire card games are called "réussite" — meaning "success" or "success in getting through." The term reflects the original design philosophy: these were games where you tried to "succeed" in sorting the cards. French patience books from the 19th century documented dozens of réussite variants.
German speakers also use "Patience" (borrowed from French), pronounced roughly "pat-ee-ENTS." Germany developed its own rich tradition of patience games, with local variants like "Große Patience" (Grand Patience) that remain popular in German-speaking countries today.
In Poland, one popular variant is known as "Kabała" (fortune telling), reflecting a cultural association between card layouts and divination. This connection between patience games and fortune-telling appears across several Eastern European cultures, where card spreads could be read either as a game or as a predictive tool.
Japan developed unique local solitaire variants based on traditional hanafuda flower cards rather than Western playing cards. These games have different rules and visual aesthetics entirely, though the core solo-play concept is identical. Western Klondike arrived in Japan via Windows in the 1990s and is now equally popular alongside traditional variants.