Playable Solitaire variant
Scorpion Solitaire
- Objective
- Complete all four King-to-Ace same-suit runs and remove them from the tableau.
- Difficulty
- Hard
- Win rate
- Roughly 1 in 5 Scorpion deals fully clear with strong play.
How to play Scorpion Solitaire
A standard 52-card deck. Seven columns of seven cards each — the first three cards of the first three columns are face-down, and the rest are face-up. The remaining three cards form the stock and are dealt as a single batch onto the first three columns when you choose to deal.
- Move any face-up card with the entire stack below it onto a column whose top card is the same suit and exactly one rank higher.
- Kings (and everything below them) can be moved onto any empty column.
- Hidden cards flip face-up only when nothing covers them.
- When you are stuck, deal the final three stock cards — one onto the top of each of the first three columns.
- Completed K-A same-suit runs are removed from the tableau automatically.
Objective and winning
Complete all four King-to-Ace same-suit runs and remove them from the tableau.
A typical Scorpion clear takes 80–130 moves. The stock deal is usually played in the mid-game, after every initial reveal has been tested, not as an opening move.
Scoring on vSolitaire
vSolitaire awards +1 per valid move and +100 for each completed K-A suit run, with a +100 win bonus when all four runs clear. The stock deal costs -1 to encourage waiting until the move is truly needed.
Strategy tips
- Reveal hidden cards before unpacking long runs. A buried Ace is more valuable than a pretty stack on top.
- Build same-suit whenever possible — off-suit stacks have to be unpacked again before they can clear.
- Empty a column early. A free column is the most powerful resource in Scorpion because any sequence can park there.
- Save the stock deal. Once you deal it, the only remaining moves come from the tableau — so test every alternative first.
- Track which suit is short. If three columns of one suit have hidden cards underneath, that suit will likely lock you out.
Common mistakes
- Dealing the stock too early as a "free move" — it locks in three new top cards permanently.
- Stacking off-suit just to expose a single hidden card without a plan for the unpack.
- Splitting a long same-suit run to grab one card and losing the ability to re-form it later.
Difficulty and odds
Scorpion is famously hard. Random deals solve roughly 15–25% of the time even with full undo. The stock deal is single-use, so timing it correctly is often the difference between a win and a soft lock.
Origin and history
Scorpion appeared in mid-20th-century English patience books as a stricter relative of Spider, trading the second deck and stock cycles for a single deck and same-suit building. Its compact rule set and brutal difficulty made it a fixture in collected Solitaire anthologies.
Scorpion Solitaire in multiplayer
Scorpion deals vary wildly in solvability, so same-deal races are essential — head-to-head fairness requires both players solving the identical shuffle.
Frequently asked questions
How is Scorpion different from Spider?
Scorpion uses a single deck instead of two, has a one-time three-card stock deal instead of multiple stock cycles, and uses the seven-column Klondike-style layout rather than Spider's ten columns.
When should I deal the Scorpion stock?
After you have exhausted every other move available from the initial tableau. The stock is single-use and adds three new top cards permanently, so dealing too early often closes a winning line.
Are Scorpion deals always winnable?
No. Most Scorpion deals are unwinnable. Even with optimal play, only about 15–25% of random deals fully clear.
Can I move out-of-sequence stacks in Scorpion?
Yes. As in Yukon, any face-up card moves with the entire stack below it, regardless of whether that stack is ordered. Only the top card of the moving group needs to match the destination.