Patience games are the oldest thing on any computer, and they have survived every change in how we use one because a deck of cards is a perfect fit for a screen you already have open. The three here are the three that matter. They look alike from a distance — columns of cards, four piles to fill, a deck laid out in front of you — but they ask genuinely different things of you, and knowing which is which saves a lot of wasted evenings.
Solitaire — the one everyone means
Solitaire here is Klondike: seven columns, most of the pack face down, a stock you turn over looking for the card you need. It is the version that shipped with Windows and the version almost everyone pictures when they say the word. What makes it what it is, and what the other two deliberately avoid, is the hidden information — you are playing a position you can only partly see, and a run can end because a card you needed was buried three deep in a column you never got into.
That means some deals genuinely cannot be won no matter how well you play, which is either the charm or the frustration depending on your mood. Draw 1 turns one stock card at a time and is close to always winnable; Draw 3 withholds two cards in three and is a real game. Both have unlimited undo, double-tap to send a card home, and an auto-finish for when the board is already decided.
FreeCell — no hidden cards, almost always winnable
FreeCell deals all fifty-two face up. There is no stock, nothing is hidden, and the whole problem sits in front of you from the first second. That one change takes the luck out almost entirely: the overwhelming majority of FreeCell deals can be won, so a loss is a mistake in the order you took the board apart rather than a bad shuffle. If you have ever wanted a card game that behaves like a puzzle, this is it.
The four free cells are the twist. Each holds one card while you dig, but they are working space rather than storage: the size of run you can move in one go is one card per empty cell plus one, doubled for every empty column, so filling all four leaves you shifting a single card at a time. The game tells you the number when a move is too big, which is the thing most newcomers trip over. Play it with four cells for the classic game, or drop to three or two for a much harder one — the score multiplier climbs to match.
Spider Solitaire — the long sitting
Spider Solitaire uses two decks across ten columns and takes the longest of the three. Its rule is the cruel one: a card lands on anything one rank higher regardless of suit, but a group only lifts as a unit when every card in it shares a suit. So the table fills up with cards you were allowed to place and now cannot shift, and a board that looks tidy can be completely dead.
One suit is a gentle introduction and mostly a matter of not burying yourself. Two is a proper game. Four is the version that beats most people, because the exact card you need might only exist twice in the whole deal. An empty column is the most valuable thing you can own in any of the three, and in Spider it is the only thing that lets you take a mixed pile apart — but you cannot deal a new row while one sits open, which is the decision the whole game turns on.
Which to open
Want something to half-think about while your mind is elsewhere? Klondike. Want a problem with a right answer, where losing is your fault and you know it? FreeCell. Have forty minutes and want the board to fight back? Spider. All three run in the browser with nothing to install, nothing to sign up for, and undo that goes back as far as you like — so none of them punish you for experimenting.
All three live in the card games section. If you want something in the same family that is not cards at all, Mahjong Solitaire is the tile-matching version of the same idea and sits with the puzzle games.