Feb 6, 2016

Churchill Solitaire and Donald Rumsfeld: Conceptually Flawed



Jasin Bovi
I love and hate this game.


Chloe Louise
I also fell into this category.  

 Always love starting off the day with a good game of solitaire and a cup of coffee but one has to ask as they "soldier on" is this game flawed from the beginning. 

Suffering not actually being able to see the game and the difficulty of some of the cards falling off the grid or not sticking to the proper place it still seemed like more of the original concept was flawed. 


Most solitaire games of that nature--all of the cards out and face up--have a parking place of some sort or a rule allowing other than Kings to be placed in blank rows. Then, thinking that it was the difficult nature of the game I was forced to get out two decks and try it on my own. 

The deal did not make sense to me, either. The difficulty concept would not exist with a real deck--right? 

Could there be a mix-up in the game plan somewhere between Churchill, Rumsfeld and the developer. Is Rumsfeld flawed. 

Is the deal flawed placing new cards on every row unless it starts with a King? 
Grape St. Dog Park, San Diego


Was it me--the game was just too diabolical as Rums said. Rums keep referring to the devil's six as the problem but I did not see that as the giant issue. 

When I tried it with cards it was much easier and much more random and the devil's six did hold the game up on more than one occasion simply because it blocks the sequence to build up the cards. 

With the real deck it was much easier to play and see. The problem to me is that Rums keeps talking about the devil's six as the problem spot and other that that it is a regular solitaire game. 

Well, Donald must be a real card game and solitaire expert because the trial at the hard level is more difficult to move than 4 card spider. 

Somewhere there is a gap between Winston Churchill, Donald Rumsfeld and his basic solitaire knowledge and the developer--perhaps this is not this game creators bailiwick--and the info Donald spouts hawking the thing. 

Were all of the ducks in a row before the game was issued or the war ensued.

One is left asking themselves--is this what happened in Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld went around on all of the Sunday shows touting the brilliance of the war but left out certain points when George Bush went on to play the game.

Would you buy it............

Seriously, there are plenty of cute and perfect and difficult solitaire games out there for free--why would someone pay for a hint or an undo for something that does not really make sense in the first place.

Is Donald trying to fool us?



Donald Rumsfeld Has Released an Incredibly Frustrating Mobile Game

 | 4 FEBRUARY 2016 7:31 AM

churchill solitaire article
True to it's creator, it's been dubbed "the most diabolical version of solitaire ever devised."
If you're like me, you've probably spent a lot of your mental energy over the years pondering about the goings on of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Is he keeping busy? Has he moved on to other business ventures? Are those business ventures video game based?
To put your worries at ease: the short answers to those questions are yes, yes, and you bet your ass they are!
Believe it or not, the 83-year-old Rumsfeld has apparently been shifting his focus from politics to mobile app development in recent years, and has just released his first game: Churchill Solitaire.
What makes Churchill Solitaire different than just regular old solitaire, you ask? Well, aside from boasting a title sequence comprised of black and white, World War 2 archival footage, Churchill Solitaire also features a 104 card deck as opposed to the usual 52 cards. Diabolical indeed!
"It's a card game that can frustrate even the most skilled player because a single move can make or break an entire game." described Rumsfeld in a developer essay on Medium.
"A number of hands are simply unwinnable. But the most steadfast players will gamely soldier on to find their way to victory."
And the early reviews for Churchill Solitaire? Well, they're mixed to say the least. Kotaku's rundown of the gamenoted the game's forced landscape perspective and cramped layout among the game's aesthetic errors, stating "The obstacle to building your columns is that they don't really fit on the phone screen. Shortly into my first game, Rumsfeld Solitaire warned me that I was getting too close to the edge, and advised me to rotate my device to get more room. It was Rumsfeld Solitaire, of course, that had chosen to put the phone in horizontal layout in the first place."
But the major issue with the game? Oh, only that it's apparently rigged:
Still, a fundamental error of design wasn't going to stop me. I played on, itty-bitty cards and all, and as I did so, an understated fact about the game became clear: It's rigged.
It has to be, by design. There are difficulty levels. The only way to set a solitaire game at different levels of difficulty is to stack the deck. The only way out was to spend more time, or start spending money, on something that was never really going to work out.
So if you're looking for a nearly-impossible mobile app game that requires "the pessimism of intelligence and the optimism of will," head over to the game's official page to download the free trial version for iOS devices (sorry Android users) today!
Source: Washingtonian



copied from the escapistmagazine.com