Spider Solitaire
CardYou won! 🎉
All 8 sequences cleared in 0 moves.
How to Play
Goal: Build eight sequences running down from King to Ace in a single suit. Each completed run is removed from the board. Clear all eight to win.
Moving cards: Click a card to select it (it picks up the descending run beneath it), then click a destination column to drop it. You can also drag-and-drop. On mobile, tap-to-select then tap-to-drop, or drag with your finger.
Rules: You can stack any card on a card one rank higher (a 7 on an 8) regardless of suit, but you can only pick up and move several cards together if they form a descending same-suit run. Empty columns accept any card or run. Press Deal to deal a new row of 10 cards from the stock — but only when no column is empty. Use Undo to take back moves, Hint to find a move, and the Suits selector to choose 1, 2 or 4 suit difficulty.
About Spider Solitaire
Spider is the marathon runner of the solitaire family, two full decks, ten columns, and the goal of assembling complete king-to-ace runs in a single suit. It first appears in card-game literature in the 1940s and became a desktop standard when Microsoft shipped it with Windows, where its one-suit mode gently hooked millions who then discovered the real game.
The difficulty dial is the suit count: one-suit Spider is a relaxing untangling exercise, two suits demand real bookkeeping, and four-suit Spider is one of the hardest widely played solitaires on earth. Every deal from the stock buries your work under a fresh row, so the rhythm of the game is: organize, deal, recover, repeat.
Spider sequencing craft
- Build in-suit whenever possible, only single-suit runs can move as a block and complete out of the game.
- Empty a column as early as you can and guard it; an empty column is the workbench everything else depends on.
- Turn face-down cards over any cosmetic tidiness, hidden cards are the only real progress early on.
- Never deal from the stock with an empty-column opportunity or big transfer pending, the new row buries it.
- Use off-suit builds as temporary parking only, and unwind them before they calcify into ten-deep mixed stacks.
FAQ
Why can't I move a sequence I built?
Only runs in a single suit move together. A red-black descending stack is legal to build but frozen as a unit, you can move its top card only. That distinction is the entire strategy: in-suit builds are assets, off-suit builds are debts.
When should I deal a new row from the stock?
Only when you have genuinely run out of useful moves, and never while a column is empty if you can help it. Each deal drops one card on every column, burying your organized runs. Squeeze the position dry first; premature deals are Spider's most common self-inflicted wound.
Is four-suit Spider actually winnable?
Yes, but win rates are humbling: even strong players win only a minority of four-suit games without undo, and casual players may go dozens of games between wins. Two-suit is the sweet spot for most people, hard enough to matter, kind enough to reward.
What happens when I complete a full run?
A complete king-through-ace sequence in one suit lifts off the board automatically, freeing its column. You need eight of them (two decks) to win, and the space each removal creates is often more valuable than the run itself, plan to exploit it immediately.
