What is Spider Solitaire?
Spider Solitaire is a single player card game that uses 104 cards (2 decks, minus the jokers). The primary goal of Spider is to clear all cards from the table.
Cards are cleared by creating same-suit runs (King-Ace) within the tableaus. Once a run is complete, it is removed from the table.
Spider Solitaire requires more patience and strategy than traditional Solitaire.
How To Play
When the game starts, 54 cards are dealt to the 10 tableaus, and the top card in each tableau is turned face up. The remaining 50 cards are in the deck, and will be dealt to the tableaus throughout the game.
You can build sequences down by rank (King through Ace), regardless of suit, by dragging and dropping faceup cards among the tableaus:
- When you complete a same-suit King-Ace run, that run is cleared from the table. The game is won by completing all runs.
- Only sequences of the same suit can be moved together. For example, if you have Jack, Ten, Nine (all hearts), you can pick up all three and drag them onto a Queen of any suit.
- When you remove a card from a tableau, the next card in the tableau turns face up.
- Any card can be placed on an empty tableau (some variations of Spider only allow Kings to be placed on empty tableaus).
- When you run out of moves, tap the deck (top left) to deal another faceup card to each tableau.
- The game is lost when you run out of moves and there are no cards left in the deck. It's possible the game is still winnable though, if you undo some moves and try a different strategy. Or, you can restart the current game from the beginning.
You can change the difficulty by choosing the number of suits to include in the game. Four suits is the most difficult, and uses 2 full decks of cards. Two suits is still quite challenging, and one suit is by far the easiest variation. All variations still use 104 cards, and consist of 8 King-Ace runs.
Other Controls
- To undo your last move, tap Undo. You can undo an unlimited number of moves.
- To see a hint, tap the Hint button. There might be more than one hint available at a time. Hints attempt to show you the best moves available, but they won't always make you win the game! Sometimes you need to go back and try a different strategy.
When there are no moves left, the hint button will highlight the deck (telling you to deal out another row of cards). Or, you might find out there are no moves left at all.
- To restart the current game, tap the Restart button.
- To start a new game, tap Deal.
- To go back to the main menu, tap the Menu button. Don't worry, your game progress will be saved!
Scoring
Scoring is similar to the original Spider Solitaire for PC. The user starts a game with 500 points:
- Any card moved deducts 1 point.
- Any run completed and removed from the table adds 100 points.
A score of 1200 or more is considered excellent!
If you have Game Center enabled and are logged in, you can post your best score to the leaderboard, and view your friends' scores too.
Settings
The settings screen can be accessed from the main menu.
There are a number of settings that customize the look of the game, such as:
- Background
- Card backs
- Card style
- Card font
- Card size
You can see the effect of the settings as you change them.
Other settings change the game play:
- The number of suits to include in the game. One suit is the easiest setting, and four suits is the most difficult.
- Scoring can be turned on and off.
- Screen rotation can be allowed (free rotation), or locked to the current orientation. Locking rotation can be great for those of us who like to lie down on the couch while playing!