Spider Solitaire
Spider with a single suit — the friendliest way in. Build columns downwards and clear a King-to-Ace run to send it off the table. Every deal is constructed from a solved game, so a winning line always exists.
ObjectiveClear the table by assembling eight complete King-to-Ace runs. A finished run lifts off the board.
Spider in one suit, the honest introduction
Spider deals two full decks — one hundred and four cards — into ten columns and asks you to assemble eight complete King-to-Ace runs. In the one-suit game every card is a Spade, which removes the rule that defeats newcomers in harder Spiders: since everything shares a suit, any sequence you build can also be picked up and moved as a group.
That makes one-suit Spider the right place to learn the game's actual subject, which is not suit-matching at all. It is the management of ten columns, five stock deals of ten cards each, and the empty spaces everything else revolves around.
How Spider is dealt and played
Fifty-four cards go into ten columns — six each in the first four, five in the rest — with only the top card of each column face up. The other fifty sit in the stock, dealt ten at a time, one card onto every column.
Columns build downward in rank, and any exposed card can move onto any card one rank above it. Finish a full King-to-Ace run and it leaves the table permanently. Do that eight times and the game is won.
- Columns build downwards in rank; suit does not matter when you stack.
- Only a same-suit sequence can be picked up as a group.
- Finish a King-to-Ace run in one suit and it leaves the table.
- The stock deals a card to every column — no column may be empty first.
- Run
- A descending same-suit sequence. Only a run can be picked up and moved as a single unit.
- Deal
- One tap of the stock: ten cards, one onto every column, face up. Five deals in the game.
- Empty column
- A cleared column. It accepts any card, which makes it the only place to reorder anything.
- Off-suit stack
- A card resting on a higher card of a different suit. Legal to place, impossible to move as a pair.
Five habits that finish Spider games
- 01
Guard one empty column as long as you can
It is the only place a stranded King can go and the only room you have to reorder anything at all. Players who spend their last empty column on a convenient placement usually lose four moves later.
- 02
Work the deepest column down first
The stock deals blindly onto every column, ready or not. Depth you leave alone does not stay the same — it gets ten cards worse, and the cards you buried are the ones you were planning to use.
- 03
Check the board can absorb ten cards before dealing
Every column must be occupied for the stock to deal at all, so a deal forces you to fill your empty columns first. Dealing onto a fragile board buries exactly what you were about to play.
- 04
Build downward from high cards where possible
A King that starts a column can eventually accept the entire run beneath it. An Ace can accept nothing at all. Starting your structures high means every later card has somewhere to land.
- 05
Complete a run the moment you can
A finished run leaves the table and takes thirteen cards of clutter with it. Holding one back for a tidier finish risks the next deal landing on top of it, and there is no reward for elegance here.
Deals built backwards from a won game
Spider has a property that makes ordinary verification useless: positions branch so fast that no practical solver can search a full game. So this table does something stronger — it builds each deal backwards. Starting from a finished, won board, the generator plays legal moves in reverse until the cards look like a fresh opening, then replays the whole forward line through the real engine to certify it.
The Built Winnable badge means exactly that: the moves that scrambled this deal, undone in order, are a winning line. You will not find that line by memory — the scrambling is long and the result looks like any other shuffle — but it guarantees the thing that matters. No Spider deal on this site is a trap.
One, two or four suits?
| One suit | Two suits | Four suits | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cards that can group-move | Any sequence | Same-suit only | Same-suit only |
| Legal parents per card | 8 (both decks) | 2 | 1 |
| Cost of an off-suit stack | None — no off-suit exists | Recoverable | Often fatal |
| Best for | Learning the deal timing | Practising same-suit discipline | Mastery |
Two suits introduces the mixed-suit penalty gently; four suits is Spider as designed. If Spider's stock pressure appeals but you want foundations to escape to, Scorpion builds its runs in place with no stock at all.
Questions about this game
- Is one-suit Spider a real version of the game or a practice mode?
- A real version. Removing suit conflicts changes which moves can be grouped, but the core Spider problems — empty-column management, deal timing, digging out deep columns — are all fully present. Most experienced players still warm up with one-suit games.
- Why does the game refuse to deal from the stock?
- Spider's rules forbid dealing while any column is empty. Fill the gap first, even with a card you would rather save. That restriction is what makes empty columns precious rather than merely convenient.
- How much of the game starts hidden?
- Forty-four of the fifty-four dealt cards start face down, and fifty more wait in the stock — so ninety-eight of the hundred and four cards are unknown when you make your first move. Uncovering cheaply is most of the early game.
- How many moves does a Spider win take?
- Far more than Klondike: a hundred and four cards have to be sorted into eight ordered runs, and most of the work happens twice as columns are built and rebuilt. Expect several hundred moves in a full game, which is why unlimited undo matters here more than anywhere else on the site.