Rules
Beetle Solitaire rules at a glance
- Use two standard 52-card decks, shuffled together.
- Deal ten face-up tableau columns.
- Six columns start with four cards, and four columns start with five cards.
- The remaining 60 cards form six stock rows of ten cards each.
- Build tableau cards downward by rank regardless of suit.
- Move a packet only when it is descending in one suit.
- Any movable card or same-suit packet may fill an empty column.
- Deal one face-up stock card to every column when you need a new row.
- A complete king-to-ace sequence in one suit clears automatically.
- Win by clearing all eight suited runs.
How to play
How to play Beetle Solitaire
Beetle Solitaire is a two-deck tableau game from the Spider family. The board is wide, the stock arrives in rows, and the win condition is not a separate foundation area. You win by assembling complete sequences in the tableau itself, then letting those sequences clear.
The twist is visibility. Unlike Spider, Beetle begins with every tableau card face up. You can see the problem immediately: mixed suits, awkward rank gaps, buried aces, and promising same-suit tails that need a column to breathe. That open information makes the game feel fairer than four-suit Spider, but it is still demanding because a useful mixed build may become a packet you cannot move later.
Setup
The Beetle Solitaire layout
- There are ten tableau columns across the board.
- Columns 1-6 each start with four face-up cards.
- Columns 7-10 each start with five face-up cards.
- The stock begins with 60 cards, enough for six full deals.
- There is no waste pile.
- There are no visible foundations; cleared runs are counted as completed.
Moves
Legal Beetle Solitaire moves
Tableau building is simple: a card can land on a card one rank higher. A 7 can go on an 8, a queen can go on a king, and a 2 can go on a 3. Suit does not matter for that placement. This is why Beetle can produce mixed columns that look temporarily useful.
Moving a group is stricter. A packet can move only if every card in the selected packet is in descending order and all cards are the same suit. A 10-9-8 of clubs can move together. A 10 of clubs, 9 of clubs, and 8 of hearts cannot move as a three-card packet, although the 8 of hearts can still move alone if it has a legal destination.
Legal build7 on 8, any suit
Legal packetQ-J-10 all hearts onto K
Legal spaceAny movable card or suited packet
Illegal build9 on J
Illegal packet6 hearts with 5 clubs
ClearsK-Q-J...2-A in one suit
Runs
What clears from the Beetle tableau?
Beetle clears a complete suited run from king down to ace. The sequence must be in exact order and in one suit. A mixed-suit king-to-ace stack is not finished; it is only a column that happens to descend. The moment the end of a column contains a true suited run, this game removes it automatically and adds it to the run count.
KQJ1098765432A
Because there are two decks, each suit appears twice. A full win means eight runs in total: two clubs runs, two diamonds runs, two hearts runs, and two spades runs. The game does not care which suit clears first.
Stock
How the stock works here
The stock has six deals. Each deal places one face-up card onto every tableau column. You can use the stock when the board stops offering useful moves, or earlier if you choose to take the risk.
This Beetle implementation does not use Spider's empty-column stock block. If a column is empty, a stock deal still gives that column one card. That rule is stated here because Spider players often expect empty columns to stop the stock, while Beetle's usual rule description is simply to deal one card to each tableau stack.
Spaces
How empty columns help
An empty column is Beetle's best workspace. It can accept any single card or any same-suit descending packet. Use spaces to separate a clean suited tail from a mixed pile, park a king-led sequence, or move a short packet out of the way so another suit can connect.
The danger is spending a space on a card that does not lead anywhere. A low singleton may fit legally, but it can also turn a flexible column into a dead end. Before filling a space, ask whether that move makes a same-suit run longer or merely moves clutter from one column to another.
Examples
Legal and illegal move examples
If one column ends in 8 of spades and another column has a 7-6-5 of hearts, the heart packet can move onto the 8 of spades. The destination suit does not matter; only the rank of the destination card matters. After the move, though, that column now has a spade above a heart packet, so a larger packet starting at the 8 cannot move together.
If a column contains 9 of clubs, 8 of clubs, 7 of diamonds, only the 7 of diamonds can move by itself, or the 8 of clubs can move only if it does not try to carry the diamond. Beetle rewards you for seeing where a clean suited tail begins, not just where a descending shape appears on the screen.
Strategy
Beetle Solitaire strategy that helps the board open
Build mixed-suit columns only when they buy you something. Since a mixed packet cannot move as a group, every off-suit card is a future tax. Sometimes that tax is worth paying because it opens a space or lets you attach a long suited tail. Other times it creates a column that looks ordered but behaves like three separate pieces.
Try to preserve same-suit tails. A 9-8-7-6 in one suit is more valuable than four scattered cards with the same ranks. Same-suit tails can travel, merge, and eventually clear. When you have a choice between extending a mixed build and extending a suited tail, the suited tail is usually the stronger long-term move.
Empty columns are strongest before a stock row. Use a space to pull a clean packet out of a mixed column, then connect it to its natural higher card. If you deal while the board still has several small cleanups available, the new row may bury those opportunities under fresh mismatches.
Watch aces and kings carefully. An ace is the end of a run, so burying it under the wrong suit can delay a clear for a long time. A king cannot be placed on another card, so it needs an empty column to move. When a king-led same-suit run starts forming, give it enough room to grow rather than using that column as temporary storage for unrelated ranks.
Mistakes
Common Beetle Solitaire mistakes
- Treating any descending stack as movable, even when it changes suit.
- Filling an empty column with a low card that cannot connect to a useful run.
- Dealing from the stock before cleaning up obvious same-suit tails.
- Burying an ace under an off-suit card just because the rank move is legal.
- Breaking a clean suited packet to make a short mixed build.
- Forgetting that a completed run must be one suit from king through ace.
Winnability
Is Beetle Solitaire winnable?
Beetle is not always winnable from a random shuffle. The face-up layout gives you more information than Spider, but the game still asks you to coordinate eight suited runs with limited space. A stock row can also split promising work by landing ten unrelated cards across the board at once.
This page does not publish a fixed win percentage. A useful number should come from this exact implementation and enough played deals, not from a different Spider-like variant with different stock or movement rules.
Difficulty
Why Beetle feels open but still hard
Beetle's face-up deal removes the memory problem. You are rarely wondering what is hidden. Instead, the hard part is mobility. The visible card you need may be trapped inside a mixed sequence, or the card that would free it may require an empty column you no longer have.
That makes Beetle a good choice if you like planning from visible information but want more tension than a small one-deck open game. It is less opaque than Spider, more structural than Golf or Pyramid, and more forgiving than Scorpion in one important way: you can build down regardless of suit, even though same-suit order is still what wins.
This version
What this Beetle page includes and leaves out
This version uses two decks, ten face-up columns, six stock rows, mixed-suit tableau building, same-suit packet movement, flexible empty columns, and automatic clearing for completed suited king-to-ace runs. Undo, restart, hints, and the result screen are included.
It does not include numbered deals, daily challenges, guaranteed-winnable shuffles, scoring bonuses, timers, or separate suit-mode settings. Beetle is already the four-suit two-deck challenge; adding an easier one-suit mode would make it closer to Spider than to Beetle.
Nearby games
How Beetle compares with Spider, Scorpion, Wasp, and Forty Thieves
Beetle is closest to Spider in layout and goal: ten columns, stock rows, and complete king-to-ace runs. Spider usually hides many cards at the start, while Beetle makes the entire opening tableau visible. That shifts the puzzle from discovery to execution.
Scorpion and Wasp also care about same-suit order, but their packet rules feel different. Scorpion allows bold packet movement even when the packet itself is messy, which can create dramatic saves and dramatic traps. Wasp softens that family with more forgiving empty columns. Forty Thieves uses two decks too, but it is a foundation builder with one-card movement and a waste pile, so the tempo is more deliberate.