Spider Solitaire

Build eight runs, each from King down to Ace in one suit. A finished run leaves the table, and the game is won when all eight have gone. You win when all eight runs have left the table. When the stock is empty and no sequence of moves can ever turn up another card or finish another run, the game is over without a win; it tells you so instead of leaving you to shuffle cards back and forth. Every game also stops after 3,000 moves. There is no points score: the game counts the cards left, the runs finished and the deals left in the stock.

Shuffle the 104 cards and deal 54 of them into ten columns, one row at a time from left to right: the first four columns get 6 cards and the other six get 5. Only the last card of each column is face up. The other 50 cards form the stock, face down, enough for five deals of ten cards. With one suit all 104 cards are spades; with two suits there are 52 spades and 52 hearts; with four suits there are two full packs.

Build in suit whenever you have the choice: a run of one suit can move as a unit, a mixed run can't. Turn up face-down cards first. A move that uncovers a card is nearly always worth more than one that only tidies a column. Empty a column as soon as you can and keep it free as long as you can: it lets you take mixed runs apart and rebuild them in suit.

One suit: all 104 cards are spades, so every run is in suit. The easiest version and the standard game here. Two suits: 52 spades and 52 hearts. A fair challenge, offered here as a setup option. Four suits: two full packs, the traditional game. Offered here as a setup option. Spiderette: a one-pack relative dealt in seven columns like Klondike, with four runs to build.

The earliest printed description known to patience researchers is an unsigned magazine article of November 1937. Albert Ostrow described the game in The Complete Card Player (1945) with a slightly different start: 50 cards in five rows, four face down and one face up, and a short last deal of four cards. By 1949 Albert Morehead and Geoffrey Mott-Smith were describing the layout used today, 54 cards in ten columns followed by five deals of ten. Playing with one or two suits, all 104 cards repeating them, is a later way of making the game easier.