Tuesday, August 4, 2026 · daily challenge
Spider Solitairedaily — August 4, 2026
- Time
- 0:00
- Moves
- 0
- Suits
- 0/8
- Deals
- 5
Tap a card to lift it and everything below it, then tap a column to drop it. Deal #656556.
About Spider Solitaire
Spider Solitaire is the patience game that rewards patience. Two 52-card packs are dealt into ten columns; your job is to build eight complete descending runs, King down to Ace, each one in a single suit. Finish a run and it lifts off the table and is banked. Bank all eight and the game is won. Nothing is hidden from you except the face-down cards in the columns and the fifty cards waiting in the stock, and every one of those will eventually land on the table whether you are ready for it or not.
What makes Spider different from Klondike is the split between building and moving. You can place any card on any card one rank higher — a red seven onto a black eight is perfectly legal — but you can only pick up a group of cards if they are already a descending run in the same suit. Mixed piles are legal, useful, and slowly fatal: every mixed junction you create is a card you will have to dig out later. Good Spider is the art of accepting the mixed join you need now while creating as few as possible.
The stock is the clock. Five times a game you may deal a fresh card onto every column, and the rule is unforgiving: you cannot deal while any column is empty. That single restriction turns an empty column from a convenience into a resource you have to spend and re-earn. Empty a column, use it to unpick a tangle, then fill it again before you take the next row — that rhythm is the whole game once the one-suit version stops being a challenge.
Choose your difficulty with the suit count. One suit is a friendly, almost meditative puzzle that most players win most of the time. Two suits is the sweet spot, where you have to think two moves ahead but a bad deal is still recoverable. Four suits is the real thing — a hard, honest game where a win is worth something. Every deal here has a number, so a deal you enjoy can be replayed exactly, shared with a friend, or handed to someone who insists it was luck.
How to play Spider Solitaire
- 1Ten columns are dealt from two packs. The first four hold six cards, the rest hold five, and the top card of every column is face-up. The remaining fifty cards sit in the stock.
- 2Build downwards on the tableau: any card may be placed on a card one rank higher, regardless of suit. A red 7 goes on a black 8 quite legally.
- 3Pick up more than one card at a time only when those cards form a descending run in the same suit. Tap the highest card of the run you want and the whole run comes with it.
- 4Tap a destination column to drop the run. An empty column accepts any card or run, and is the most valuable square on the table.
- 5When you move the last face-up card off a column, the card beneath it turns over — that is how you make progress.
- 6Tap the stock to deal one extra card onto every column. You get five deals, and you cannot deal while any column is empty, so fill the gap first.
- 7Complete a King-to-Ace run in one suit and it is removed automatically and scored as one of the eight.
- 8Bank all eight suits to win. Undo is unlimited if a move turns out badly.
Spider Solitaire strategy
- Build in suit whenever you have a choice. Two cards of the same suit joined together stay liftable forever; a mixed join is a wall you will have to knock down later. If a black 9 can go on either of two 10s, put it on the black one.
- Keep one column empty for as long as you can afford to. An empty column is a workbench: it lets you park a stray run, unpick a mixed junction, and put everything back tidier than it was. Filling it with a random King wastes it.
- Do not bury high cards. A King on top of a column is dead weight — nothing can ever be placed on it — but a King *underneath* six other cards is a genuine problem. When you have a choice of which column to load, load the one whose face-down cards you care least about.
- Empty every possible move out of the position before you deal. The stock deals onto all ten columns at once and can convert a beautifully sorted table into a mess in a second, so squeeze the board dry first — especially any move that turns over a face-down card.
- Uncovering a face-down card beats almost everything else. Prefer the move that flips a card over the move that makes a slightly tidier run, because information is worth more than tidiness this early.
- In two and four suit games, expect to break a run to save a column. A nine-card run is impressive but useless if it never becomes a full suit; splitting it to reach a face-down card is usually the right call.
- Use undo as a thinking tool, not a confession. Try a line, see what it uncovers, and rewind if it did not work — the deal number never changes, so nothing is lost.
Spider Solitaire variants
Each plays differently enough to be worth its own run.
1 suit
Spades only. Every run lifts — the gentlest way in.
2 suits
Spades and hearts. The classic middle setting.
4 suits
All four suits. A win here is a real one.
Spider Solitaire daily challenge
One shared deal a day, the same for everyone. Win it and your streak goes up.
Spider Solitaire — common questions
Why can I not deal from the stock when a column is empty?
It is the standard Spider rule and it is there to stop the game becoming trivial. A deal puts one card on every column, so an empty column would either swallow a card and start a new pile from nothing, or you would be able to bank an empty column as free storage forever. Fill the gap and the stock unlocks. It also makes empty columns genuinely valuable, which is where most of the strategy comes from.
What is the difference between 1 suit, 2 suit and 4 suit Spider?
Only the cards, not the rules. One suit deals eight packs of spades, so any descending run is automatically a movable same-suit run and the game is mostly about sequencing. Two suits deals spades and hearts, so you must check colour and suit before every join. Four suits uses all four suits from both packs, which means a run you have carefully built is far more likely to be mixed and unliftable. Roughly speaking one suit is a warm-up, two suits is the standard game, and four suits is the serious one.
Is every Spider deal winnable?
No, and any site claiming otherwise is guessing. Spider is a game of imperfect information — fifty cards are still unseen when you start — so some deals cannot be won even with perfect play. Estimates for one-suit Spider are well above ninety per cent winnable, while four-suit sits far lower. That is exactly why unlimited undo and a replayable deal number are here: if a deal beats you, you can take it apart again from the start.
Can I move a run that is not all the same suit?
Not as a group. You can place any card on a card one rank higher, so mixed columns build up naturally, but only a same-suit descending run lifts as a unit. Cards that cannot currently be picked up are greyed out on the board, so you can always see at a glance where a column is going to fight you.
How does undo work, and does it cost me anything?
Undo rewinds one move at a time, up to three hundred moves back, and there is no penalty beyond the move counter that has already ticked. Completed suits come back too. Since the deal is a pure function of its number, you can also hit Replay at any point to restart the identical deal from scratch.
What counts as a move, and what is a good score?
Every run you move and every row you deal counts as one move. A comfortable one-suit win lands somewhere around 100 to 160 moves; four-suit wins routinely run past 250 because of all the unpicking. Time matters less than move count — the clock keeps running while you think, and thinking is the point.
How is Spider different from ordinary Klondike solitaire?
There are no foundations to build up and no waste pile to cycle. Everything happens on the tableau, you build down by rank instead of alternating colour, and the win condition is eight complete suits rather than four aces-up piles. Spider games are longer, less luck-driven once the deal is out, and much more about managing space than about drawing the right card.