Spider Solitaire — play free online

Spider Solitaire uses two full decks, 104 cards split across ten columns. You're building eight King-to-Ace runs, all same suit. Finish one and it clears itself off the table. Finish all eight and the game is done.

It's harder than Klondike. Not unfairly so, but harder.

How to play

The layout

Cards are split unevenly at the start: the first four columns get six cards, the last six get five. Only the top card of each column starts face-up. The rest are hidden until you uncover them. Whatever's left sits in the stock pile on the left and gets dealt out in batches of ten later on.

The goal

Build eight complete same-suit runs from King down to Ace. Finish one and it disappears. Clear all eight and you win.

Moving cards

Any face-up card can go on top of a card that's one rank higher. Suit doesn't matter for basic placement — a 7 of hearts goes on an 8 of clubs just fine.

The rule that catches people out: you can only pick up and move a group of cards if every card in the group is the same suit, in descending order. A mixed-suit pile is valid on the table, but it's stuck there. You move it one card at a time. This is where most of the game lives. Building across suits is fast and often tempting. It's also how you end up with a pile you can't do anything useful with.

Flipping cards

Move a card and whatever's underneath flips up. That's how you open the game. The more hidden cards you expose, the more you have to work with.

Dealing from the stock

Click the stock to deal one card face-up to each column. You can't deal if any column is empty, so either fill it first or plan around that restriction. Five deals total — each one adds ten more cards to manage, so it's worth cleaning things up before you click.

Completing a sequence

Put together a full King-to-Ace run of the same suit anywhere on the table and it removes itself automatically. Usually a face-down card flips up underneath.

Tips

Prioritize same-suit builds. Mixed piles look fine early on but they limit what you can move once the table fills up.

Dig out face-down cards first. The hidden cards at the top of each column are your biggest constraint. Until you know what's there you're working with incomplete information.

Think before dealing. Every deal adds a card to every column. If things are already tangled, more cards make it worse, not better. Get things sorted before reaching for the stock.

A cleared column is good for temporarily parking cards you need to move around. Just remember you can't deal while one is empty — the game blocks it.

Use undo when you need it. That said, leaning on it constantly is its own kind of stuck.

About the one-suit version

This version uses only spades. Standard Spider also comes in two-suit (spades and hearts) and four-suit variants. More suits means mixed-suit piles happen more often, which makes the group-movement rule much harder to work around. One suit is the right place to learn the game.