Idiot's Delight

English

Etymology

So called because of the low chance of winning the game.

Noun

Idiot's Delight (uncountable)

  1. Any of various games of solitaire or patience.
    • 1910, The Cosmopolitan, Volume 50, p. 761,
      On the other hand, I know one of the biggest operators in New York who finds his recreation after a hard day’s fight with the market in solitaire—‘Idiot’s Delight’ is his especial game.
    • 1976, Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick, Delacorte Press, Chapter 2, p. 28,
      They were fabulously well-to-do, and descended from Americans who had all but wrecked the planet with a form of Idiot’s Delight—obsessively turning money into power, and then power back into money again, and then money back into power again.
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