Spider Solitaire

One suit, two suits, four suits

Those three buttons set the difficulty, and they are the whole game. At 1 suit all 104 cards are spades, so any card sits on any card one rank higher and a sequence always moves as a group. At two suits the pack is half spades and half hearts, and runs start dying on the wrong colour. At four suits it is two ordinary decks, and every move costs you something.

Start at one and work up. Spider at four suits is a different game rather than a harder one, and it is the reason most people think they do not like Spider. Pressing a suit button deals a fresh hand, so switch between hands rather than in the middle of one.

Place any card on any card one rank above it, whatever the suit. Carry only a run of one suit. That gap between what you may place and what you may move is the game.

The stock, and the rule that catches everybody

Fifty four cards go out, ten columns with the top card face up. The other fifty sit in the stock and come out ten at a time, one to every column, five deals in all.

The catch: the stock will not deal while any column is empty. Every column needs a card in it before the deal is allowed, which turns an empty column from a prize into a decision. Empty columns are the best thing you own in Spider, and clearing one right before you need the stock is how a promising hand dies.

A finished sequence of thirteen leaves the table on its own the moment it is complete, and the counter at the top reads DONE out of eight. When the eighth one goes, the game is over and the table says so.

Nothing to install, and nothing kept

This is a web page, not an app. Just open it and play Spider Solitaire: no download, no update, no account, no email. Tap a card, then tap the column. It works the same on a phone as on a laptop.

New deals again, and Undo steps back through the last thirty moves. The moves, score and clock run along the top, with a fullscreen button on the end, and from a keyboard ctrl and z undo while ctrl and n deals a new hand.

It is free, and you might see an ad now and then, which we will try to keep discreet. Nothing is saved when you close the tab, because there is no account to save it to and nothing is asked of you in the first place.

We do not sort the deals

Every hand is a straight shuffle of the 104 cards. We do not filter for hands that can be won and we do not number them, so some deals are lost before you touch them, particularly at four suits. A winning hand at one suit is common enough; at four it is an afternoon. New costs nothing.

Spider is the one game here that wants two decks, which is why it is the longest of the six solitaire games on this shelf. Pyramid or TriPeaks if you have ten minutes. Spider if you have the evening.