Guide
How to Play Spiderette Solitaire
Spiderette is Spider Solitaire condensed to a single 52-card deck and seven tableau columns. The goal is the same: build descending same-suit runs from King down to Ace, and every completed run leaves the board. Clear four runs — the whole deck — to win.
The OPKA table starts with approachable 1-suit Spiderette and lets you switch to 2-suit or 4-suit difficulty from the game chrome. The rules never change; the suit mix only changes how often movable same-suit chains appear naturally.
How Spiderette is set up
Spiderette uses one standard 52-card deck. Twenty-eight cards are dealt Klondike-style into seven columns — the first column gets one card, the second two, up to seven in the last — and only each column's top card starts face up.
The remaining 24 cards form the stock. Each deal places one face-up card onto the columns from left to right: three full rows of seven, then a final partial row that covers only the first three columns.
- Tableau: seven staircase columns where every build happens.
- Stock: 24 cards dealt in rows of seven, ending with a row of three.
- Completed runs: four King-to-Ace same-suit sequences must be removed.
- Difficulty: 1 suit, 2 suits, and 4 suits share the same rules.
Legal moves
Tableau cards stack downward by rank regardless of suit, so a 7 can rest on any 8. But only a descending same-suit sequence can be picked up and moved as one stack — mixed piles are stuck until you rebuild them.
Any movable card or same-suit run can move into an empty column. Empty columns are not King-only, which makes them the strongest planning tool on the board.
Stock deals and empty columns
A stock deal is only legal when every column holds at least one card, including the final three-card row. Fill every empty column before taking the next deal.
When a move exposes a face-down card, it flips automatically, and a completed King-to-Ace same-suit run is removed automatically as part of the move log.
Spiderette versus Spider
Spider deals two decks across ten columns and asks for eight completed runs; Spiderette halves everything — one deck, seven columns, four runs — so games are faster but each buried card matters more.
The Klondike-style staircase also means the right side of the board starts deep: six face-down cards sit under the last column, so digging out the tall columns early is usually the difference between a win and a stall.