How to Play, a Gentle Guide for Complete Beginners

Never played Solitaire? Find card games confusing? This guide starts from nothing and takes it slowly. You do not need to know any rules before you begin, and you do not need to be good at card games. Read as much or as little as you like, then have a go. You really cannot get it wrong.

First, the most important thing: you cannot break anything

This is a game you play by yourself, at your own pace. Nobody is timing you or watching. There is no penalty for a wrong move. Three things are always there to help you:

• Undo takes back your last move. You can undo as many times as you like, right back to the start of the game.
• New game deals a fresh set of cards whenever you want to start over.
• Hint suggests a move when you are stuck.

So the best way to learn is simply to try things and see what happens.

What a deck of cards is (in case you have never used one)

A standard deck has 52 cards. Every card has two things: a number and a suit.

The numbers, from lowest to highest, are:

Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King.

In this game, Ace is the lowest and King is the highest. It helps to think of Jack, Queen and King as “11, 12 and 13”. So “one higher than a Jack is a Queen”, and “one lower than a 7 is a 6”.

The four suits are spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds. On each card you will see its number and a small suit mark next to it. (If the suit symbols are hard to read, you can switch them to plain letters S, H, C and D in the options, described later.)

The goal of the game

You are trying to sort the cards into runs that go from King all the way down to Ace, in the same suit, like this:

King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, Ace.

Each time you complete one of these full runs, it is cleared away for you automatically and counts as one finished set. When you have cleared all the sets, you win. The screen shows your progress as “Completed suits”, for example “0 of 4”.

That is the whole point of the game: build downward runs until each one is finished.

What you see on the screen

• Columns of cards. Most of the screen is taken up by several columns (tall stacks) of cards. The card at the bottom of each column is face up, so you can read its number. The cards behind it are face down for now. This area is sometimes called the “tableau”, but you do not need that word to play.
• The stock. This is a small face-down pile. When you get stuck, it deals one new card onto every column to give you fresh options. The button is labelled “Deal row”.
• Completed suits. A counter that shows how many full King-to-Ace runs you have finished so far.

The one rule you really need

You may place a card onto another card that is one number higher.

Examples:

• A 6 can go onto a 7.
• A 7 can go onto an 8.
• A Jack can go onto a Queen (because Queen is one higher than Jack).

Doing this over and over builds a run that counts downward, like 9, 8, 7, 6. When a run reaches all the way from King down to Ace, it is complete and disappears.

Two more helpful points:

• Empty columns are gold. If you move all the cards out of a column so it is empty, you can then place any card into that empty space. Empty columns give you room to rearrange, so try to create one when you can.
• Face-down cards turn themselves over. When you move the face-up card off a column and a face-down card is revealed underneath, the game flips it face up for you automatically. Uncovering hidden cards is how you make progress, so aim to free them up.

Start here: your very first game

Follow these exact steps for the gentlest possible start.

1. At the top of the page, set Game to Spiderette.
2. Set Difficulty to 1 suit (easiest).
3. Press New game.

You now have a small board of seven columns, and every card is the same suit, so you only have to think about numbers. You need to complete four runs to win.

Now play like this:

1. Look along the bottom of the columns for the face-up cards. Find two where one is exactly one number higher than the other, for example a 5 in one column and a 4 in another.
2. Move the lower card onto the higher one. With a mouse, click the lower card, then click the column you want to move it to. The card hops across.
3. Keep going, building runs downward: put a 6 on a 7, a 5 on that 6, a 4 on that 5, and so on.
4. Whenever moving a card reveals a face-down card, that new card flips up and gives you something new to work with.
5. When you genuinely cannot move anything useful, press Deal row to deal a fresh card onto every column. One small catch: you cannot deal while any column is empty, so fill empty columns first.
6. Complete a full King-to-Ace run and watch it clear. Do that four times to win.

If you ever feel stuck or unsure, press Hint for a suggestion, or Undo to step back. There is no rush.

When you are stuck, in order

1. Look again for any card that is one higher than another face-up card. It is easy to miss one.
2. Ask yourself if moving a card would uncover a face-down card. That is usually worth doing.
3. Press Hint to have the game point out a move.
4. If nothing can move, press Deal row to bring in new cards (fill empty columns first).
5. If you have talked yourself into a corner, Undo back a few steps and try a different order.

The buttons, in plain terms

Climbing the difficulty ladder

Once you have won a one-suit game, you can make it more interesting a step at a time. Do not jump straight to the hardest setting; add one thing at a time.

1. Spiderette, 1 suit. The gentle starting point above.
2. Spider, 1 suit. The classic game most people mean by “Spider Solitaire”. It uses a bigger board of ten columns and needs eight runs, but the cards are still all one suit, so the thinking is the same.
3. 2 suits. Now there are two suits mixed together. You can still place any card onto a card one number higher, but to complete a run and clear it, the whole run must be the same suit. So you start caring about keeping suits together.
4. 4 suits. The full, traditional challenge. Losing is normal here, even for experienced players, so treat a win as a real achievement.

There are also other styles of the game to explore later (Will o’ the Wisp, Simple Simon, Mrs. Mop and Scorpion). Each has slightly different rules, and each one explains its own twist in the blurb under the title and in “How to play”. There is no need to touch them until you feel ready.

Playing without a mouse, or with a screen reader

The whole game works from the keyboard, and it is built to be used with a screen reader. A quick start:

• Press Tab until you reach the game board (or use the “Skip to the game board” link at the very top).
• Use the arrow keys to move between cards and columns.
• Press Enter or Space on a card to pick it up, then Enter or Space on another column to drop it there.
• Press Escape to cancel if you change your mind.
• Press R to hear a summary of the whole board, or C to hear just the column you are on.
• Press D to deal a row, U to undo, H for a hint, and N for a new game. These letter keys work while the board has focus.

The game announces every move as you make it (“Moved Six to column 3”, “Turned up Nine of spades”, “Completed a run of spades”), so you always know what happened. The full key list is in “How to play”.

Options you might like

Open How to play to find a few settings:

• Appearance. Light, dark, high contrast, or match your system. High contrast uses strong, bold colours if that is easier for you to see.
• Card labels. Show suits as symbols (the little shapes) or as plain letters (S, H, C, D), whichever you find clearer.
• Sound and volume. Turn the gentle sound effects on or off and set how loud they are.

Your choices, and your current game, are remembered the next time you visit.

A tiny glossary

Suit

The family a card belongs to (spades, hearts, clubs or diamonds).

Run

Several cards in a row going down in number, like 8, 7, 6, 5.

Column

One of the tall stacks of cards on the board.

Stock

The face-down pile that deals new cards when you press “Deal row”.

Face up / face down

A face-up card shows its number; a face-down card is turned over so you cannot see it yet.

Empty column

A column with no cards left, into which you may place any card.

Last words of encouragement

Everyone loses Solitaire games, especially the harder settings, and that is part of it. Start on one suit, use Undo and Hint as much as you want, and let yourself experiment. Once the “place a card on the next number up” idea clicks, the rest follows. Have fun, and welcome to the game.

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