Spider solitaire across two decks and ten columns, in a Victorian specimen cabinet. One suit is a gentle afternoon, two is a real game and four is a fight - and the rule that decides all of them is that you may not deal another row while any column stands empty, so an empty column is both the thing you want and the thing you cannot afford to keep. A finished king-to-ace run is pinned like a specimen and carried off to the case, and there are only ever eight of them.
- Controls
- Drag or tap to move; Z undo, R restart, N new deal
- Device
- Desktop and mobile — touch controls built in
- Players
- 1 player
- Price
- Free, forever
- Made by
- Kao Games
Two decks across ten columns. Build downward regardless of suit, but only a run of one suit moves as a unit, and a full king-to-ace run leaves the table for good.
The empty column is the whole game
You may deal another row of ten from the stock only when every column has a card in it. An empty column is the most useful space on the board - it takes any card and unpicks almost any tangle - and it is also the thing standing between you and the next ten cards.
There are only five deals in the stock, so the question is never whether to keep an empty column but for how long.
One suit, two suits, four suits
One suit is a game you can play while thinking about something else. Two is the version most people mean by Spider. Four is a genuine fight, because a descending run you have carefully built is worthless as a unit unless every card in it shares a suit.
The difficulty gap is large and measurable: the same shallow strategy that wins better than a quarter of one-suit deals wins almost no four-suit ones.
Eight runs, and no more
A completed king-to-ace of a single suit is pinned and carried up to the specimen case, worth a hundred points. Eight of them ends the game.
Scoring starts at five hundred and loses a point per move, so a long shuffle that achieves nothing is not free. Undo is unlimited, and every deal carries a number you can replay.