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Eight names, in Latin and Italian
Why the games have new names, and what each one means.
Every game in Caravita is one she may already know from family evenings. Spite and Malice, Clock Patience, Golf, Crazy Eights, Pyramid, FreeCell, Klondike solitaire, rummy. Some of those names belong to other people, and some of them were never names at all, just what a family called it. So each game has a new one, short, in Latin or Italian, and the old name sits right beside it so nobody has to learn anything.
- Omissa, the one left out. Spite and Malice. Caravita started here.
- Linea, a line. Clock Patience, with a hidden spot to bluff from.
- Cascata, a waterfall, in Italian. Golf solitaire: the columns fall onto the middle card.
- Altura, height. Crazy Eights, where a 9 goes on anything.
- Summa, the sum. Pyramid: two cards that add up to 13 go away together.
- Cellae, the cells. FreeCell. Almost every deal can be won.
- Solus, alone. The old game is called solitaire, and this is the word it came from.
- Regina, queen. A rummy with a wild card that changes every round.
The game itself is Caravita: cara, dear or beloved, and avita, inherited from one’s grandparents. The names are checked against the trademark registers, which is the least romantic sentence on this site and one of the more important ones.