Spider Solitaire

How to play

1. What am I looking at when a spider solitaire game starts?: Two decks — 104 cards — are dealt into ten columns: six cards in each of the first four, five in the rest. Only the top card of each column is face up; 44 cards below are face down. The remaining 50 cards sit in the stock, exactly five deals. The row of eight empty slots at the top is the foundation, and filling it wins the game.
2. How do you move cards in spider solitaire?: Tap a column: the run on top of it is picked up and every column that can take it lights up. Tap a lit column to drop them. Use the − and + buttons beside the pick to take fewer cards. Landing is loose — any card goes on a card exactly one rank higher, suit does not matter — but lifting several at once is strict: they must be one suit in descending order.
3. When should I deal a new row in spider solitaire?: Deal when the ten columns can no longer feed each other. One tap puts a face-up card on every column, spending ten cards; there are five deals in a game. Two rules to remember: you cannot deal while any column is empty, so fill it first; and a deal counts as a move and cannot be undone — undo stops at the last deal.
4. How do you win a game of spider solitaire?: Whenever the top of a column shows thirteen cards of one suit running king down to ace, that run flies into the foundation on its own — no tap needed, and it does not cost a move. Light up all eight slots and the game is won. Undo is unlimited and costs nothing: there is no score here, only time, moves, undos and sets on the result card.

Rules & variants

Spider solitaire basics: two 52-card decks without jokers, 104 cards in all. Fifty-four are dealt into ten columns — six each in the first four columns, five in the other six — with only the top card of each column face up, so 44 cards start face down. The other 50 go to the stock, exactly five deals. The goal is to assemble eight complete king-to-ace runs in a single suit; each finished run is collected automatically.

Landing and lifting are two different rules in spider solitaire, and this is the single most misread point of the game. Landing is loose: any card may be placed on a card exactly one rank higher, regardless of suit. Lifting is strict: to move several cards at once they must form a same-suit, descending run. A stack you were allowed to build is not necessarily a stack you are allowed to move.

Empty columns in spider solitaire accept any card of any rank and any suit — unlike klondike, where an empty column only takes a king. That makes an empty column the most valuable thing on the table: it is the only place where a mixed-suit pile can be taken apart and re-sorted. It also has a price, because the stock refuses to deal while any column is empty.

Dealing in spider solitaire: one tap deals a face-up card onto every one of the ten columns, spending ten cards, five times per game. The new row can land right on top of the empty column you just worked for — that is the cost of the rule, not a bug. A deal counts as one move and cannot be undone: the undo stack is sealed at every deal, and the only way back is restarting the deal.

Automatic collection and automatic flips: when the top of any column reaches thirteen same-suit cards from king down to ace, the engine moves that run into the next empty foundation slot at once — no player action, no extra move counted — and any face-down card newly exposed turns over immediately. Undo replays the game from its deal code, so both the flip and the collection roll back together with that move.

The three suit tiers: one suit uses spades only, two suits adds hearts, four suits uses all four. All three deal 104 cards and all three need eight sets; only the number of suits changes. More suits means shorter movable runs and a much steeper game, so start at one suit until the rhythm of digging out face-down cards and freeing a column feels natural. Records for the three tiers are kept separately.

Spider solitaire strategy: (1) prefer the move that turns a face-down card over — information is worth more than a tidy table; (2) gather one suit into one column whenever you can, because a mixed pile has to be taken apart sooner or later and it only gets more expensive; (3) an empty column is the only place to unpick a mixed pile, so do not spend it casually — and remember that keeping it empty blocks the deal; (4) tidy up before you deal, because the new row covers every column.

A worked example: one column already shows a same-suit run from king down to two, twelve cards, and another column has a lone ace of the same suit on top. Tap that column to pick the ace up, tap the run's column to drop it, and the top of that column instantly holds all thirteen — the run flies into the first foundation slot, both columns turn over the face-down card they just exposed, and the move counter goes up by exactly one. Press undo once and everything returns, including the two cards that just turned over.

How long a game takes and whether every deal is winnable: once the rules are familiar, a one-suit game runs about ten to twenty minutes and a four-suit game much longer. Some random deals genuinely cannot be won — the same as with a real pack — and this site does not pre-filter for solvable deals, because solving requires seeing all 44 face-down cards, which you never do. When the stock is empty and truly nothing can move, a non-blocking note appears with three ways out: undo, restart this deal, or a new deal. There is no lose screen here.

Deal codes and head-to-head play: every game has a code such as 41739205-2, where the first part is the shuffle and the suffix is the suit tier — the same number under one suit and under four is two entirely different decks. Copy the game link, send it to a friend, and you both play the identical deal; fewer moves wins, then faster time, and identical on both is a draw. Restarting a deal after you win or stall gives you the same cards, but now you know where the face-down cards are, which makes it a different game entirely.

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