Donald Rumsfeld Launches Churchill Solitaire Gaming App

The game’s official website says the game embodies Churchill’s leadership qualities and personality, including thinking two steps ahead, making sacrifices to achieve a bigger goal, and taking advantage of luck and opportunity.

The app, available for free download, now has a rating of 4.5 out of 5 on the Apple app store.

According to its developers it is, “the most diabolical version of solitaire ever devised”.

Rumsfeld is an avid fan of a particular variant of solitaire Churchill supposedly played during the war, and the retired politician teamed up with a D.C. design firm and an IN coder to preserve the game for digital posterity. For he’s just launched “Churchill Solitaire”. And no ordinary solitaire, this, it is an obscure version that was played by Winston Churchill.

Rumsfeld said that he was first given the rules of the game by Andre de Staercke, a diplomat who was mentored by Churchill after he escaped Belgium during World War II.

His contributions apparently came in the form of recorded memos such as: “Instead of capturing history, it is getting a bit artsy”, or “We need to do a better job on these later versions”.

The objective is to create eight piles of cards in the top right Victory Rows. Rather than code it himself, voice memos were sent to the developers with his ideas and feedback. Each stack must go in ascending order, starting with an ace and ending with a king. But instead of America, Churchill Solitaire focuses on one of Britain’s most notable figures – Winston Churchill – and opens with archive footage of the wartime Prime Minister touring bombed-out cities and visiting troops.

The twist involves two rows of cards and a “devil’s row” of six cards on the top left, which players must eliminate.

“There are damn few undos in life”, he said.