Spider Solitaire

What it is

Spider is a solitaire played with two decks, 104 cards in all. You build complete runs from King down to Ace, and every finished run leaves the table. Clear all eight runs and the game is won.

The table has ten columns. The first four hold six cards and the other six hold five, with only the top card of each face up. The remaining 50 cards wait in the stock, in five groups of ten. You start with 500 points.

You choose how many suits are in play when you start a new game. One suit is gentle and a good way to learn. Two suits asks for more planning. Four suits is the hard version, and plenty of deals at that level end in a loss. Each choice keeps its own statistics, so your numbers compare like with like.

Ten columns are a lot for a narrow screen, so the cards are sized to the width of the display and long columns are compressed to stay on screen. The game saves as you play and keeps a timer, a move count and a score.

How to play

On the columns, place a card on one that is exactly one rank higher, in any suit: a 6 can go on any 7. The catch is how things move. Only a run of cards that follow each other in the same suit can be picked up together. A mixed sequence has to be taken apart a card at a time.

Empty columns are valuable. Any card or run can go into an empty column, so keeping one open gives you room to rearrange.

When you run out of moves, tap the stock. It deals one new card face up onto each of the ten columns, so it is only allowed when no column is empty. Fill empty columns first, or the game will tell you to. When you build a run from King to Ace in one suit, it moves off the table by itself and the card below it turns face up.

Drag a card and it follows your finger, with the columns that can accept it highlighted. You can also tap a card to send it to the best fit, which prefers joining a run of its own suit. On a keyboard, use the arrow keys, Space to pick up and drop, Enter to play the best move, D to deal from the stock, U or Ctrl+Z to undo, H for a hint and N for a new deal.

Scoring is simple. Every move costs one point and every completed run earns 100. Undo has no limit, and Hint cycles through useful moves. When only single-suit runs remain and the stock is empty, the game merges them and clears the table for you.

Tips

• Build in one suit whenever you can. A run of mixed suits blocks everything beneath it, because it cannot move as a group.
• Work towards empty columns early. With two suits or four, an empty column often decides the game.
• Before you deal from the stock, check that you have made every useful move. A new row buries the cards you were about to free.
• Turn over hidden cards before tidying. A face-down card is a card you cannot plan around.
• If two cards of the same rank could take yours, choose the one in your suit and the one that leaves the shorter pile of cards on top.
• Undo costs nothing. Try a line, look at what it opens, and take it back if it leads nowhere.

Questions people ask

Can every deal be won? Not necessarily. With one suit and Winnable deals on, which is the default, a solver checks that a deal can be won before you get it. With two or four suits our solver cannot check deals in a reasonable time, so those deals are random and some cannot be won. The New game dialog says so.

What is the daily deal? It is the same for everyone on a given day, for the suit count you have chosen; the day changes at midnight UTC. Win it on consecutive days to grow your streak; a missed day simply starts the count again. The two- and four-suit daily deals are random like any other deal at those levels.

Why can I not deal from the stock? Spider only allows it when every column holds at least one card. Fill the empty columns first.

Why will a group of cards not move? Only runs in a single suit move together. If the run contains two suits, pick up just the part in one suit.

Can I play on a phone? Yes, in portrait or landscape. The cards scale to the screen, and the settings include a four-colour mode and three card backs.

Does it cost anything? No payment and no account.