Idiot's Delight

English

Etymology

So called because of the low chance of winning the game.^[1]

Noun

Idiot's Delight (uncountable)

1. Any of various games of solitaire or patience.
   • 1910, The Cosmopolitan, volume 50, page 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, chapter 2, in Slapstick, Delacorte Press, page 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.