Spider One Suit Solitaire
How to play Spider One Suit
Spider is a solitaire card game played with 104 cards in ten piles, where runs of thirteen cards in one suit, from King down to Ace, are built and cleared from the table.
Spider dealt from spades alone, eight of each card.
About Spider One Suit
Spider One Suit deals spades alone, eight of each card. Every card one rank higher is of the same suit, so every run you build moves together and leaves the table once it reaches thirteen cards from King to Ace.
No card is ever on the wrong suit here, so what holds a game back is the 44 face-down cards, the empty piles and the timing of the stock. A King can move only into an empty pile, since no card ranks above it, which makes every empty pile worth keeping for one.
Before you press the stock, join what runs you can. A dealt card that is not one rank below the top card of its pile blocks the run under it until that card is moved again.
Of 513 shuffled Spider One Suit deals the game's solver searched, at up to a million positions each, it proved 97% can be won, more than in either other Spider game. A deal it could not prove in that search may still be winnable, so 97% is the least it showed rather than the true odds.
The eight copies of each card are alike, so it never matters which King a run grows from: any Queen fits any King, and any Jack any Queen.
Clicking a card sends it onto the leftmost pile whose top card is one rank higher, since every such card is of its suit. Drag it instead when that pile still has face-down cards you want to reach, as the card would only bury them deeper.
Of 100 fresh Spider One Suit deals searched at the Hint's 167,000 positions, the solver proved 87 won and left only 13 unsettled, the most of the three Spider games, so a hint here is usually the first move of a proved winning line.
The goal of Spider
Build eight runs of thirteen cards, each from King down to Ace in one suit. A finished run leaves the table at once, and the game is won when all eight are gone.
How to set up Spider
Spider is played with 104 cards, two packs' worth, shuffled together. 54 of them are dealt into ten piles: five face-down cards under each of the first four piles, four under each of the other six, and one face-up card on top of every pile. The other 50 cards are the stock.
Spider rules
A card can be laid on any card one rank higher, whatever its suit, so a Seven may go on any Eight. A King is never laid on an Ace.
A pile's top card can always move. A face-up card lower down moves together with the cards above it only when they run down from it in one suit, each one rank below the card under it. An empty pile takes any card or any run that may move.
Press the stock to deal one card face up onto every pile, ten cards at a time, five deals in all. The stock will not deal while any pile is empty. Whenever a face-down card is left on top of its pile, it is turned face up.
When thirteen cards of one suit run from King down to Ace on top of a pile, they leave the table at once for a foundation, whether a move or a deal completed them.
Click a face-up card to move it with the run above it onto a pile whose top card is one rank higher, of its own suit first, else into the first empty pile. Drag a card to choose its place yourself.
The full Spider guide, with strategy tips and common questions