Cards are right thanks to Google

Procrastinators rejoice: After wasting far too much of everybody’s time during the Olympics with a series of addictive mobile games, Google has rolled out a tried and true method of time-wasting to its search results via browsers and the Google app: solitaire.

The ancient card game will now appear in your browser or on your mobile device when you search for ‘‘solitaire’’, letting you while away a few minutes (or hours) shuffling cards around and trying to clear your table.

There are no frills in this version of the game, just a choice between easy and hard mode (hard is three-card draw, AKA the way the game is supposed to be played). There’s also an ‘‘undo’’ button, which we all know is cheating.

Also new is a version of tic tac toe (naughts and crosses), which lets you play the simple game against an AI in a choice of three difficulty modes.

If you’d like to know the shame of being beaten at a children’s game by a computer, choose ‘‘impossible’’.

The games join a growing list of quirky apps and useful easter eggs that can be called up through Google search if you know the right term. Another is ‘‘flip a coin’’, for if you need to settle an argument or decide between two alternatives. Meanwhile, on your mobile device, searching ‘‘bubble level’’ will let you measure whether your table is straight.

Elsewhere in the Google ecosystem, easter eggs are often hidden deep in the bowels of the Android operating system.

Both Lollipop and Marshmallow featured a hidden clone of the hit mobile game Flappy Bird, while the newest version, Nougat, hides an app inspired by the more recent game Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector. SMH