Wes Cherry. Have you ever heard of him? Well, he’s known as the creator of the most played PC game ever developed. It is Solitaire – which was built for Windows and installed on millions of PCs worldwide. The game was first coded by a Microsoft intern by that time named Wes Cherry, with the help of Susan Kare. Cherry decided to add a Boss key which when pressed would switch out from the game instantly, after him thinking the game will be a workplace hit. But later it was revealed that Microsoft has remove that option before it was included in Windows. One of the workers was fired in 2006, after New York city Mayor saw the Solitaire game on his office computer. The boss key feature would have saved him if it was included in to the game.
It was known that even though the game was used by millions of users there was no compensation or any appreciation was ever given to Wes Cherry. He was never benefited financially.
Below are the interesting answers given by Wes Cherry for some of questions that people have asked.
Are you bitter at not being paid for such a popular and essential utility?
Yeah, especially since you are all probably paid to play it!
I would like to compensate you for your fabulous game since Bill Gates won’t. How much money do you want?
One penny per copy. If everybody pitches in, I promise to throw you all a big party.
Exactly how much time and money has been wasted globally as a result of office workers playing Solitaire?
There was a global recession in 1991/1992, just after Solitaire was released. Thank you very much. Oh, and you can’t have your time back.
Have you ever been caught playing Solitaire in the office and passed it off as software testing?
There was a “boss-key” which when pressed would display some random .C code. Microsoft made me remove that.
Are there any cheats? What are they?
Yup. When playing Draw Three, you can hold down Ctrl-Shift-Alt and click on the deck to get one card. That makes
If toast always falls butter side down, and cats always land on their feet, what would happen if you strapped some toast to a cats back?
You’d get your eyes gouged out by a pissed cat.
Do you play Minesweeper? What’s your high score?
I did. I actually learned a strategy from Bill Gates to win at Minesweeper: Click as fast and as randomly as you can.
If you could choose someone who would be afflicted with only telling the truth for a day, who would you choose?
George Bush. Man, what an evil dude. I wish I had another Solitaire game up my sleeve. If so I’d unleash it upon the world, causing another deep economic recession, leading a summary one term pruning.
If you consider how many millions of potential hours of constructive international office time your game has turned into mindless skiving, do you think you’ve done a good thing or a bad thing? (I think good, so don’t feel like I’m putting you on the spot)
The thing about time is they are always making more of it. No harm done.
If you could take any object in the world and put it somewhere, what would that object be and where would you put it?
Me, Britney Spears.
If you had been paid $1 for every game of ms solitaire ever played, would you be in any fit state to do this interview?
It took me 11 months to answer these bloody questions. If you cheapos would have actually paid me I might have not been so tardy. So buck up!
(Source – Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitaire_(Windows))