How to play Scorpion Solitaire

Scorpion is a one-deck patience in the Spider family, named for the way a stubborn card can sting you right at the end. It looks a lot like Spider, but its signature twist makes it both more forgiving and more devious: you may pick up any face-up card along with every card piled on top of it — even when those cards are a tangled, out-of-order mess — and carry the whole stack to a new home. That freedom is the heart of the game, and learning to use it is what turns a hopeless-looking board into a win.

Goal

Sort all 52 cards into four complete sequences, each running from King down to Ace in a single suit. The moment a full King-to-Ace run forms in one suit, it lifts off the board to a foundation. Build all four and you win.

The board

• Seven columns hold the deal. In the four left-hand columns the bottom three cards start face-down and flip over only as they are uncovered; everything else starts face-up.
• The stock holds three reserve cards. Click it once and it deals a single card, face-up, onto each of the first three columns — a one-time lifeline, so save it for when you are truly stuck.

Moves

• Build down in the same suit — a 9 of clubs goes only onto a 10 of clubs. Suits never mix within a run.
• Grab any face-up card and it brings every card above it along for the ride, ordered or not. Drop it onto a same-suit card one rank higher.
• Only a King, or a pile headed by a King, may move into an empty column — empty columns are precious, so open one when you can.
• There are no free cells and no reshuffles: every move counts, and undo is there when a line goes wrong.

Strategy

Your first job is always to expose the face-down cards in the left columns — until they are flipped you are planning half-blind. Because you can move disordered piles, you can temporarily shift an awkward stack aside to free a buried card, then rebuild underneath it. Look for chances to reunite split same-suit runs, and resist breaking a tidy run unless it genuinely frees something you need. Hold the three-card deal in reserve: once you have played it there is no going back, so empty a column or untangle a key suit first, and only deal when the board has truly stalled. Patience and a willingness to undo are worth more here than luck.