Locale miasma

Linux has so many problems and so many solutions, but if you've been in it for years, two of the biggest little issues that turn into patience cancers are sound and locales. Note from this page the number of variables which can be accepted.

But there are memory (aka "speed") concerns involved with locale selection, which is why I typically only use "C", by uncommenting it inside /etc/locale.conf. To check:

$ locale
LANG=C
LC_CTYPE="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_PAPER="C"
LC_NAME="C"
LC_ADDRESS="C"
LC_TELEPHONE="C"
LC_MEASUREMENT="C"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="C"
LC_ALL=C

However, suppose I want to do something as simple as play solitare.

$ sol v=Klondike
Non UTF-8 locale (ANSI_X3.4-1968) is not supported!

What's needed is a fast way to switch locales, obviously, but without the downstream issues of perhaps font regeneration and other failures.