Daily Spider Solitaire 4 Suits

Four-suit Spider Solitaire is two full decks, every suit twice, dealt into ten columns. Runs in one suit are rare and short, an empty column is the only real working space, and each deal from the stock drops ten new cards on whatever you had not finished.

Our solver cannot win every four-suit deal. With every card in view it won 89 of 100 random deals it tried, and today's deal, the same for everyone, is one it won and replayed move by move. Undo as much as you like: at this level, going back to the last stock deal and trying another order is part of the game.

How to play Spider Solitaire

• The goal is to clear the table: build eight runs from king down to ace, each in one suit. A finished run leaves by itself and the card under it turns up.
• The deal puts 54 cards in ten columns, six in each of the first four and five in the rest, with only the top card face up. The other 50 wait in the stock.
• Put any card on a card one rank higher, whatever its suit. Nothing goes on an ace.
• Cards move together only as a run in one suit. A run in mixed suits has to come apart card by card.
• An empty column takes any card or run, not just a king.
• Click the stock to deal one card onto every column, five times in all. You can deal even while a column is empty; the empty column gets a card like the rest.
• Click a card to send it, with the run on top of it, where it fits best, onto the same suit if it can. Or drag it where you want it.
• The footer keeps your time, your moves and the deals left. Your score is moves plus seconds, so lower is better.

One, two or four suits?

Four suits is for players who already win two suits regularly. The deck is the same 104 cards, but two cards of every rank and suit means a same-suit fit is rarely in reach.

If four suits feels like a wall, two suits teaches the same habits with more room for mistakes: keep columns empty, break mixed runs before a deal, and finish runs early.

Getting through four suits

• Early on, build across suits if it turns a card. With four suits, waiting for a same-suit fit usually means waiting for the stock.
• Keep one column empty for as long as you can. It is the only way to reorder a mixed run, and at four suits nearly every run is mixed.
• Before each deal, finish or shorten what you can. The ten new cards land on top of everything, and a run you could have moved now may be stuck for the rest of the game.
• Undo is free. When a line stalls, go back to just after the last stock deal and try another order.