Rules
Mrs. Mop Solitaire rules at a glance
- Use two standard 52-card decks shuffled together.
- Deal all 104 cards face up into thirteen columns of eight cards each.
- There is no stock, waste pile, reserve, redeal, or separate foundation area.
- Build tableau cards downward by rank regardless of suit.
- Move one top card at a time, or move a same-suit descending sequence as a packet.
- Mixed-suit descending stacks can be built, but they cannot move together.
- Any movable card or same-suit packet may fill an empty column.
- A complete same-suit sequence from king down to ace clears automatically.
- Win by clearing all eight suited runs.
How to play
How to play Mrs. Mop Solitaire
Mrs. Mop Solitaire is a two-deck open tableau game in the Spider family. The entire deal is visible from the start, so the puzzle is not about guessing hidden cards. It is about cleaning a very busy table: thirteen columns, eight cards in each column, and only a few ways to move more than one card at a time.
Your job is to turn the layout into eight complete suited runs. A run is king, queen, jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, ace in one suit. When a finished run reaches the end of a column, this game removes it automatically. Clear all eight runs and the deal is won.
Background
What is Mrs. Mop Solitaire?
Mrs. Mop is usually credited to Charles Jewell and is commonly described as a relative of Spider. The relationship is easy to feel: both games care about descending sequences and both remove full king-to-ace runs. Mrs. Mop changes the rhythm by removing hidden cards and stock deals entirely.
That makes it unusually direct. You can inspect every card before the first move, but you still have to earn mobility. A descending mixed-suit stack may look tidy, yet it behaves like separate pieces because only same-suit tails move as packets. The game gets its depth from that tension between visible order and actual freedom.
Setup
The layout on this page
- Thirteen tableau columns sit across the board on wide screens.
- Each column starts with exactly eight face-up cards.
- On small screens, the columns wrap into a touch-friendly grid so the page does not require sideways scrolling.
- The game tracks completed runs, empty spaces, and moves.
- Undo restores the previous tableau and completed-run count.
- Restart replays the same shuffle from the opening position.
Moves
Legal Mrs. Mop Solitaire moves
Tableau building goes downward by rank. A 7 can land on any 8, a queen can land on any king, and a 2 can land on any 3. The destination suit does not matter for that basic placement. A heart can build on a club, a spade can build on a diamond, and so on.
Packet movement is stricter. You may move one top card by itself, or you may move a tail only when every card in that tail is in the same suit and descends by one rank at each step. A 10-9-8 of clubs can travel together. A 10 of clubs, 9 of clubs, and 8 of hearts cannot move as a three-card packet, even though the ranks descend.
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 tableau?
A run clears only when the final thirteen cards of a column are in exact king-to-ace order and all thirteen cards share the same suit. A mixed-suit K-Q-J-10 down to ace may look almost finished, but it is not a clearing run. It has to be sorted into one suit first.
KQJ1098765432A
Because the game uses two decks, each suit has two complete runs somewhere in the layout. You do not need to clear the suits in any particular order. A strong position is one where clean tails can move freely enough to gather around their matching higher cards.
Spaces
Why empty columns matter so much
An empty column is the best tool in Mrs. Mop. It can accept any movable single card or same-suit packet, which means it can act as a temporary shelf while you pull a suited tail out of a mixed column. One empty space helps. Two spaces can completely change the board because you can shuttle cards through one space while preserving another.
Use spaces deliberately. Parking a random low card may be legal, but it can waste the one place that would have let you move a king-led sequence or untangle an ace. The best empty-space moves usually expose a whole column, extend a suited tail, or set up a finished run.
No stock
There is no stock or redeal
Mrs. Mop does not rescue the board with fresh cards. All 104 cards are already on the table. That gives the game a calm, chess-like pace: before moving, you can inspect where both copies of a needed rank are and decide which one is more reachable.
The absence of a stock also means there is no reason to make filler moves while waiting for new information. If a move does not create space, improve a suited tail, or prepare a run, it may simply make the visible layout harder to move through.
Examples
Legal and illegal move examples
Suppose one column ends with the 8 of spades and another column ends with the 7-6-5 of hearts. You may move the whole heart packet onto the 8 of spades, because the packet itself is a same-suit descending sequence and the destination is one rank higher. The new stack is mixed at the join, so a larger packet starting with the 8 of spades cannot move together.
Now suppose a column ends with 9 of clubs, 8 of clubs, 7 of diamonds. The 7 of diamonds can move alone if a legal 8 or empty column is available. The 8 of clubs cannot carry the 7 of diamonds with it, because that two-card tail changes suit. Mrs. Mop constantly asks you to find the true movable tail, not just the visible descending shape.
Strategy
Mrs. Mop Solitaire strategy
Start by looking for columns that can be emptied. A column with several cards that all have natural homes elsewhere is a candidate for your first space. Do not worry if the route takes a few moves; a real empty column is often worth more than a short clean sequence that cannot move.
Preserve same-suit tails whenever possible. A 9-8-7-6 of one suit is mobile material. It can travel as a group, merge with the 10 of that suit, and eventually become part of a cleared run. A mixed 9-8-7-6 may still be useful, but it is usually a temporary bridge rather than a finished structure.
Use mixed-suit building with a purpose. Sometimes placing a club 7 on a heart 8 is exactly right because it opens a column or frees a longer tail. The mistake is treating every mixed build as progress. If a mixed move traps a suited packet under an off-suit card, it can cost more mobility than it creates.
Watch kings and aces. Kings need empty columns to move, so a buried king-led run can be hard to reposition after the spaces are gone. Aces are the tail end of clearing runs; placing the wrong card on top of an ace can delay a whole suit. Good Mrs. Mop play often comes from keeping kings available and aces clean enough to finish the run they belong to.
Mistakes
Common Mrs. Mop mistakes
- Assuming a mixed descending stack can move as one packet.
- Using an empty column for a low singleton that does not reveal or connect anything.
- Breaking a clean same-suit tail to make a short mixed build.
- Ignoring a column that could be emptied with two or three careful transfers.
- Covering aces with off-suit cards when a run is close to completion.
- Moving a king into a space without a plan for the cards below it.
Winnability
Is Mrs. Mop Solitaire winnable?
Mrs. Mop gives the player more information than many solitaire games, but that does not mean every shuffle is a win. The all-open deal makes mistakes easier to diagnose, while the movement rule still limits how quickly you can turn mixed columns into suited runs.
This page does not publish a fixed win-rate claim. A useful percentage should come from this exact implementation and a meaningful set of played deals. For now, the honest guidance is practical: more spaces usually mean a much more controllable deal.
Difficulty
Why Mrs. Mop is skill-heavy
Hidden-card solitaire often asks you to manage uncertainty. Mrs. Mop asks you to manage space. You can see the answer pieces, but you may not have the freedom to move them yet. The hard part is making that freedom: opening columns, keeping same-suit tails intact, and avoiding legal moves that create immobile mixed stacks.
That makes Mrs. Mop a strong choice if you like open-information games but want something larger and slower than FreeCell. It is also a good next step after Spider if you enjoy clearing runs but want to trade stock pressure and hidden cards for a fully visible layout.
Variants
Rule version used on this site
This page uses the standard open Mrs. Mop structure: two decks, thirteen face-up columns of eight, no stock, rank-down building regardless of suit, same-suit packet movement, flexible empty columns, and automatic clearing for suited king-to-ace runs.
It does not add a stock, redeal, timer, scoring bonus, daily challenge, guaranteed-winnable shuffle, or foundation-building variant. Those additions would change the character of the game. Mrs. Mop is strongest when the whole problem is visible and every space has to be earned from the original layout.
Nearby games
How Mrs. Mop compares with Spider, Beetle, Scorpion, and Baker's Dozen
Spider is the closest famous relative, but it usually hides many tableau cards and adds new rows from the stock. Mrs. Mop starts open and never deals again. Beetle is another open Spider-family game, but Beetle keeps a ten-column layout and uses stock rows, while Mrs. Mop puts all 104 cards into thirteen columns immediately.
Scorpion and Wasp share the idea that suit order matters, but their packet movement is more permissive. Baker's Dozen also uses thirteen columns and all-open information, yet it is a one-deck foundation builder rather than a two-deck run-clearing game. If Baker's Dozen is a compact sorting tray, Mrs. Mop is the full table after both decks have been spilled out and made solvable through space management.