Spider (solitaire)

Spider is a type of solitaire card game. It is one of the most popular two-deck solitaire games. While difficult, the majority of games can be won.

The object of the games is to remove all suits, assembling them in the tableau before removing them. Initially, 54 cards are dealt to the tableau in ten piles, face down except for the top cards. The tableau piles build down by rank, and in-suit sequences can be moved at once. The 50 remaining cards can be dealt to the tableau ten at a time when none of the piles are empty.

There are several variants of spider, such as Relaxed Spider or Spiderette. The former doesn't require all spaces to be filled before redealing, while the latter is played with only one deck.

Windows Spider All 32 bit versions of Windows (Windows 95 and beyond) contain the Microsoft version of Spider. This version allows play with one, two, and four decks.

Cheats The Statistics can be manipulated by directly editing the registry values [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Microsoft\Spider] or [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Spider]

Hacks 'Multiple Instances' The Statistics can be manipulated by exploiting a flaw in the way windows handles the termination of multiple simultaneous instances of the application. Open SPIDER and select 'CANCEL' on the 'Difficulty Level' dialog box. Start another SPIDER session and play whichever type of game you choose in that session. Win or lose, the statistics will only be updated if you close the first instance of SPIDER before closing the second or later instance(s). The registry will always will be updated with the statistics of the last instance of SPIDER to terminate.

See also: Solitaire terminology