| 3 | to | 7 | — | 6 | — | 29 | to | 25 |
which leaves the position thus:—
Black now usually plays from 1 to 5, and has a good sound strong game.
CHAPTER XIV.—SOLITAIRE.
By the late Captain Crawley.
As a game for one player there is no superior to Solitaire. Apparently easy and simple, it is really intricate and scientific. Governed by a well-defined principle, chance forms no element of its practice. Like Chess and Draughts, it is entirely a mental and demonstrable game, full of variety, and affording ample scope, in its almost endless combinations, for the display of thought and ingenuity.
Solitaire is played on a board of thirty-three holes, in each of which a marble or glass ball is placed. Solitaire boards are made, but the game may be just as efficiently played on a properly marked piece of card-board, with draughtsmen or counters instead of marbles. This plan, indeed, is preferable to and cheaper than any other.
The method of play is as follows:—One marble is removed from its place, and then another is passed into the vacant hole. Take up the marble over which you jump, and continue to take piece after piece, always going in straight lines and never in diagonals, till you bring back the last marble from the hole whence the first was taken. One marble only can be taken at one jump; but, as in Draughts, you may proceed to play, and take, with the same marble, so long as there is a piece en prise with a vacant hole in the line behind it. The repetition of the figures will show the continued move of the piece.