The ads are locking up the game.

It was working again for me yesterday. There were no ads and I was able to play all the Daily Challenge games.

I was able to get the escape key to work once a couple of days ago, but most of the time the only way I was able to get out of the lock was to close the entire program. If you can get the escape key to work though, it's a good solution!

As it is (and knock on wood), my game seems to be working again since yesterday. I wonder if the problem is with one particular ad that won't play nice and so will lock up the game while other ads are fine. It could explain why this problem is happening
intermittently depending on how often that ad comes up.

And now the problem is back. Was working fine up until about 10 minutes ago and am now trying to get into a star club pack and an ad has everything locked up.

Okay. I checked to see if I had any Microsoft updates available for download as VileOyster hinted. No critical updates available, but I looked at optional updates available and found 18. I selected each for install. Had to restart the computer. The ads don't
freeze the Microsoft Solitaire Collection! I would suggest to everyone here to check your optional updates. They don't load automatically like the critical ones do.

Finally got it -- there was a Microsoft update installed on my PC overnight -- when I uninstalled it, the games worked again; no freezing on the ads.