Spider Solitaire

How to play Spider Solitaire

Spider is played with two decks — 104 cards dealt across ten tableau columns. The first four columns get six cards and the rest get five, for fifty-four in all; only the top card of each column is face up, and the remaining fifty cards form the stock. Your goal is to build eight complete King-down-to-Ace sequences in a single suit. Each time a full same-suit run forms on a column, it lifts away to one of the eight foundations — clear all eight and you have won.

Building is generous: you may place a card on any card one rank higher, of any suit — a red Six drops happily onto a black Seven. When you uncover a face-down card, it flips up automatically. So far this is just patience with a large table.

The rule that makes Spider Spider is how you pick cards up. You can only lift a group of cards if they form a same-suit run with no gaps — the Nine, Eight and Seven of Spades move together as a unit, but a Nine of Spades sitting on an Eight of Hearts does not. A mixed descending sequence is fine to look at and fine to build on one card at a time, yet only its neat same-suit tail from the top can travel in one move. That single constraint is the whole game: everything below is about turning messy piles into tidy same-suit runs.

One suit, two suits or four — and how winnable each really is

Use the toggle above the board to choose your difficulty; changing it starts a fresh game.

• One suit deals 104 spades — every card the same suit, so any descending run is automatically liftable. It is the gentlest version and, played with a little care, almost always winnable. This is the place to learn the flow.
• Two suits adds hearts, so you now have to keep colours from tangling. It is a real step up but still often winnable for a thoughtful player.
• Four suits is the full standard game, and it is genuinely hard: even strong players win only around one deal in three. We deal every game at random and make no promise that a given deal is winnable — that honesty is the point. With unlimited undo you can always rewind and try a different line.

The stock, and when to use it

When you run out of good moves, click the stock to deal a new row — one face-up card to every column. There are five deals in all. One firm rule the classic game enforces and we keep: you cannot deal while any column is empty. That is not a nuisance so much as a warning — dealing on top of your careful runs buries them under fresh cards, so squeeze out every legal move first, and never empty your last column right before you were about to deal.

Strategy that wins deals

• Build same-suit runs whenever you can. Two cards of the same suit in order are worth more than a longer mixed pile, because only same-suit runs move as a group. Prefer the play that keeps a suit together.
• Expose face-down cards fast. Every hidden card is unknown information and dead weight. Early on, the strongest moves are the ones that flip something new — you cannot plan around cards you cannot see.
• Keep a column empty as a workspace. An empty column is Spider’s most powerful tool: it accepts any card or run, so you can park an awkward sequence there while you untangle the suit beneath it. Clearing a short column early pays for itself many times over — just remember an empty column also blocks the next deal until you refill it.
• Do not deal until your moves are exhausted. A deal is a one-way commitment that covers all ten columns at once. Wring out every rearrangement first; a row dealt onto a tidy board is far kinder than one dealt onto a stuck one.
• Plan before you commit to a build. Ask what a move uncovers and what it buries. Sometimes the “obvious” drop entombs a card you needed; a moment’s thought about the next three moves is worth more than speed.

About this version

This is duplixo’s own implementation — free, with no sign-up and no ads sitting on top of the cards. Your game is saved on your device as you play and resumes if you close the tab; your wins, best time, fewest moves and streaks live in the stats panel, kept separately for each difficulty because one, two and four suits are really three different games. It plays with a mouse, by touch, or entirely from the keyboard — every card, the stock and every empty column is a real button, so you can Tab to a run, press Enter to pick it up and Enter again on a column to drop it. Undo is unlimited (Ctrl/⌘+Z), and if you ever run out of moves the game says so and offers a way back rather than leaving you stranded. There is deliberately no hint button: an honest Spider hint means searching the whole deal for a solution, and we would rather not pretend otherwise.

Spider is a public-domain two-deck patience of uncertain origin, played since at least the 1940s. Its name is usually traced to its eight foundations — a spider’s eight legs — the eight complete suits you assemble to win. It became one of the most-played card games in the world when a version shipped bundled with desktop computers, where its selectable one-, two- and four-suit difficulty introduced a generation to the idea that the same patience could be a two-minute warm-up or an afternoon-long puzzle.

Prefer a game where nothing is hidden and skill decides everything? Try FreeCell — all fifty-two cards face up with numbered deals you can share. Or return to the classic that started most people off, Klondike Solitaire — draw 1 or draw 3, with unlimited undo.