CLUJ Solitaire, the most elegant of Zachtronics' B-sides

Zachtronics generally ship a single player card game inside of each new Proper Game they release. I made a video on my previous favourite, Shenzhen Solitaire, but now that there's a standalone collection, I've discovered the pinnacle of elegant solitaire design: CLUJ!
Shenzhen vid: • Shenzhen Solitaire

[@HarrHarrHarrify]

T - Туз - Tuz - Ace K - Король - Korol - King D - Дама - Dama - Queen V - Валет - Valet - Jack

[@TheHopperUK]

I was thinking to myself T stood for Tsar but this is clearly much better

[@krikun98]

​@@TheHopperUKthese are the common names of the cards in Russian. Having spent my childhood playing cards with my grandfather, the English version (Ace, King, Queen, Jack) was actually quite an adjustment. Another note - 36-card decks (only 6 and above, no jokers) are also very common in Russia, full decks of cards are actually harder to find.

[@TheHopperUK]

@@krikun98 Thank you so much for this information! I learned something today!

[@gilvy12]

Kluj is one of my favorites in the set, but I would really recommend spending some time with Fortune's Foundation. It's definitely the most difficult of the bunch and requires a lot more planning but once I understood the strategy better I've found it to be the most satisfying game in the collection

[@lordofthe6string]

video proof of different devs having differing priorities but being equally valid.

[@ThatHatGuy]

This is a really interesting concept! I think I'll remember the TKDV thing by referring to it as "The Kraft Dinner Variable," which has all the letters in order -- "Kraft Dinner" being what Canadians refer to "Kraft Macaroni and Cheese" as, which is what Americans will know it better by; but the point is, it's a mnemonic device that works for me.

[@friendlight6992]

My made up memory rule for TKDV is : Truth is above all, King is highest in court, after her is the Dame and the Viceroy is subservient to the king and queen.

[@Charlie-pm5di]

Apologies if you knew this (or worse, say it later in the video), but the Windows "Solitaire" game is Klondike. Felt like you were grasping around for a word to use other than Solitaire. Edit: Saw in the Sawayama Solitaire description it refers to Klondike. So there you go.

[@domukaz]

Of "Korol, Dama, and Valet," "Dama" and "Valet" are pretty easy to remember as "Dame" and "Valet," and "Korol" helpfully starts with the same letter as "King." And then "T" stands for "top," I guess.

[@tenbeat]

Tsar?

[@lhrosts7082]

"Tuz", which comes from the same place as "deuce"/"dice" - the other name for Ace @@tenbeat

[@domukaz]

@@lhrosts7082 lol I love that weird numerical oddity, presumably arising from German decks that didn't use ace cards, so they promoted the 2 cards over the kings instead. Wiktionary says Russian got this usage from Polish, which sounds plausible.

[@AndorianBlues]

@@domukaz German suited decks were the most commonly used deck in Eastern Europe before the advent of the contemporary Anglo-French deck so it makes sense they would have just transferred the existing terminology over to the new cards. A similar mismatched terminology issue exists in English. The names of two of the suits in the modern Anglo-French deck, "clubs" and "spades," are references to suits in the Spanish/Italian style decks which were in common use in England before the French pattern was introduced. Clubs refers to the Spanish suit of bastos (the cards actually have pictures of clubs on them) and spade is either directly from Italian "spade" or an Anglicization of the Spanish "espada," both meaning sword. The word is unrelated to the word spade meaning a shovel.

[@rich_in_paradise]

I've played so much Shenzhen solitaire (nearly 60k wins) because I idly play it while I have youtube or streams on. IMO the best solitaire ever made, but I'll have to check out KLUJ as it's not one I've played before despite owning most Zachtronics games.

[@vlandemart]

Concept of a game that consists of minigames from your other games is really clever, I like it

[@henrikkurka2681]

Totally agree with you on the elegance. I love this game. Since "cheating" is allowed, this game really should have one undo-button since you can drop a card in the wrong place by accident and then your game is broken. However I love Fortune's Foundation even more. A masterpiece that you should play right away. I am close to 200 wins there now. Need another hobby 🙂

[@AndorianBlues]

Almost all of my time with the Solitaire Collection has been spent playing Fortune's Foundation, which I absolutely love, but it looks like I should check out Kluj more. re: terminology for these kinds of games, I like the traditional British English name "patience" for this genre.

[@Qu0thTheRaven]

10:00 its either DMV (dept of motor vehicles) or MVD (motor vehicle dept)

[@gloverelaxis]

that feels like the ultimate solitaire design, wow

[@normalasylum]

The US driver's license place is the DMV or Division of Motor Vehicles. Unfortunately some states have an MVD (Motor Vehicle Division) instead!

[@not-on-pizza]

Funnily enough, DVLA is the organization that deals with that over here.

[@Woodledude]

I think the trick is that "Solitaire" is a *board game* genre. It's nonsensical in video games because that's the default, but most board games are played with multiple people, to the point where 1-person play is considered a genre of its own.

[@Quimbyrbg]

D is also a Roman numeral for 500, so you could visualise the order as representing years: V 5 D 500 K 1000 T All time(?) The concept of time is represented by t in calculus, maybe that works.

[@GoblinHourGames]

I just designed and released a solo card game that has blackjack elements so this was pretty cool to check out - thanks for the video!

[@AzureLazuline]

i think i'd actually like this much less if it were just 1-9, since then the roleplaying aspect is gone! It feels silly to talk about "roleplaying" or "immersion" for a simple playing-card game, but i really do think it adds a lot.

[@TheDarnn]

it's funny that you actually guessed "valet".

[@StoneCresent]

The game description refers to this as Cluj Solitaire. I think that’s the official spelling for it.

[@Pentadact]

Oh whoops, fixed - thanks!

[@rhalaal]

What % of win do you estimate one could have in this game?

[@Pentadact]

I feel like I win at least 80% of the time, but some of those are tricky. Most of the ones I fail, I feel like there's something I could have done better. It seems likely some deals would be unsolvable, but I haven't seen one that felt that way - maybe it controls the deal a little.

[@AndorianBlues]

@@Pentadact I know that Fortune's Foundation is tweaked to only allow solvable deals, so wouldn't be surprised if the same is true for other games.

[@nixthenamed]

Looks like a lot of fun, it's simple enough that i'm going to try playing it with real cards and just mark the "cheated" cards with a glass bead

[@Pentadact]

Yeah, I'm tempted to try it IRL too - I was thinking you could rotate the cheated cards sideways, like tapped cards in Magic.

[@nixthenamed]

@@Pentadact that's perfect!

[@nixthenamed]

Played it a few times in paper, really fun and rotating the cards works great. Gonna keep this at my desk as a time waster. Thanks for the video! One tip for playing with limited space, when a stack has a sequence of subsequent cards at the bottom, I arrange them horizontally like a poker hand since they're usually moved a block

[@cardboard-boxgames9308]

@@Pentadact I was just coming down to the comments to recommend doing this! I paused the video to try it out cos it seemed exciting. Rotated cards work very well for playing analog.

[@mscottveach]

I don't understand how Tom Francis is so dismissive of the ZAchtronics games? "Shenzen I/O didn't amke sense to me." I am so confused by this.

[@finctank]

But Tom it’s “CLUJ” 😅

[@ginemginem]

Wouldn't say solitaire means "single player", it's more single player game where there is a singular end-state where you have to get to following a set of rules in a sort of a linear puzzle kind of process, and where a missplay can get you 'stuck'.

[@ginemginem]

So it needs a defined end-state, and the start is random but using the same "game pieces" which are traditionally cards.

[@ghrenna]

Solitaire literally means solitary, usually because you are playing with a deck of cards meant for 2 or more players, with a single one. In romance languages it's basically implied as being the single player mode of a game that's generally multiplayer.

[@ginemginem]

@@ghrenna Yes, that's the etymology. The origins of a name doesn't necessarily overlap with the definfition 1:1.

[@oldvlognewtricks]

@@ginemginemThen - to interrogate your definition - name a ‘solitaire’ that isn’t single-player. The rest of what you wrote just says ‘the game has rules and an objective’… so: it’s a game.

[@mrmarmellow555]

🎉BRILL💯🫖LAD

[@StillTheBest1973]

Is it true you got a " special version " of the ' Equalizer ' in TF2? I know this is totally random question but I wanted to know..