Spiderette Solitaire

Seven columns, Klondike shape

How to play Spiderette Solitaire

Twenty-eight cards go into seven columns as a staircase — one card in the first, seven in the last — with only the bottom card of each turned up. That is the Klondike deal exactly, twenty-one cards hidden and twenty-four left in the stock.

Everything after the deal is Spider. There are no foundations: you build descending sequences in the tableau itself, and when a column holds a complete king-to-ace run in one suit, that run lifts off the board. Four runs wins.

The stock deals a whole row at a time, one card onto every column, and it will refuse while any column is empty. There are four deals — three of seven and a last one of only three, since twenty-four does not divide evenly by seven.

Sequences only

Which groups Spiderette will move

Working a small board

Spiderette Solitaire strategy

Take the same-suit placement whenever both are legal. If a 7 of clubs can go on the 8 of clubs or the 8 of hearts, the clubs move is almost always right even when the hearts move uncovers something. A suited junction is a card you can move again later; a mixed one is not.

Keep a column open for as long as the stock allows. Spaces here accept anything and are the only way to unpick a badly mixed column — but you cannot deal with one open, so plan which card you will sacrifice to close it before you need the row.

Dig the right-hand columns early. Column seven has six cards buried under one, and those are the cards that decide the deal. Every reveal in the shallow left-hand columns is cheap; every reveal on the right is worth several of them.

Do not chase a run to the ace too early. A completed run vanishes, which is good, but the cards in it were also your working space. Mid-game it is often better to hold a nearly complete run as a stable place to build than to cash it in.

Three ways the board tightens

Where Spiderette deals seize up

Building mixed piles because you can

The building rule lets a 7 of clubs sit on an 8 of hearts, and that move is often correct. But it creates a pile that can only be dismantled one card at a time, and every mixed junction is a place your run will later break. Prefer the same-suit placement when both are available, even if it is the less obvious move.

Filling a space with a card you cannot lift again

Any card fills a space here, which makes spaces cheap to use and expensive to waste. Put a lone 4 into an empty column and you have a column that will take a 3 and nothing else — and you have lost the only place a long run could have gone.

Leaving a column empty when you need a deal

The deal is blocked while any column is empty, so a space you were saving becomes a toll the moment the board stalls. If you are close to needing the stock, fill the space first — deliberately, with the least useful card you have.

Easier than Spider?

Is Spiderette harder than Spider?

On this site, yes — and that surprises people, because Spiderette is half the size. The reason is suits. Our Spider page deals a single suit, so every descending sequence is automatically movable and the game is genuinely beginner-friendly. Spiderette uses all four suits, which is the full-difficulty rule.

Against a four-suit Spider it is the easier game, since one deck and four runs is a much smaller problem than two decks and eight. But do not come here expecting a gentler version of the Spider on this site. It is a smaller board playing by harder rules.

We do not publish a win rate. Spiderette versions differ on whether spaces take any card and on the number of deals, and both move the figure a long way.

Spider at half size

Spiderette against its neighbours

Easthaven is the closest comparison for feel: the same one-deck row-deal rhythm, but building alternating-colour towards foundations rather than suited runs, which makes it the friendlier of the two.