Scorpion
Added 02/2026
Scorpion Solitaire: The Venomous Cousin of Spider and Yukon
By Martin Petroff
If you love the satisfying, sequence-building logic of Spider Solitaire but find yourself longing for the wildly liberating "move any stack" mechanics of Yukon, you are about to meet your new favorite game. Scorpion Solitaire is a brilliant, highly venomous hybrid of the two. It requires you to build perfectly ordered, same-suit columns, but it allows you to drag massive, messy, disorganized chunks of cards around the board to achieve it. Because almost the entirely of the 52-card deck is dealt onto the board right from the start, it feels like an open puzzle—until you realize that the three cards hiding in the reserve stockpile can either save your game or completely ruin it.
How to Play
The setup for Scorpion is incredibly unique, and managing the few face-down cards on the left side of your board is the absolute key to surviving the game.
The Objective: Just like Spider, your goal is to assemble four complete sequences of cards in descending order, from King all the way down to Ace, within the exact same suit. Once a full 13-card sequence is built within the tableau, it is automatically removed from the board. Clear all 52 cards to win.
The Setup (The Tableau):
Shuffle a single, standard 52-card deck.
Deal the cards into seven columns from left to right. Every single column will receive exactly 7 cards.
Columns 1 through 4: Deal the first 3 cards face down, and the next 4 cards face up.
Columns 5 through 7: Deal all 7 cards completely face up.
You now have 49 cards on the board. The remaining 3 cards form your face-down Stockpile (the Scorpion's "tail") at the top or bottom of the board. There is no waste pile.
How to Play:
The Brutal Building Rule: You must build the tableau columns in strictly descending order by the exact same suit. (For example, a 6 of Clubs can only be placed onto a 7 of Clubs).
The "Move Anything" Rule: This is the Yukon mechanic that saves you. You can grab any face-up card in a column and move it, dragging every single card sitting on top of it along for the ride, regardless of how mixed-up the stack is. The only requirement is that the bottom-most card of the group you are moving forms a valid descending, same-suit match with its target.
Revealing Cards: There are only 12 face-down cards on the entire board (hidden in the first four columns). Whenever one of these face-down cards is fully exposed, flip it face up to put it into play. Uncovering these quickly is your top priority.
Empty Columns: If you manage to completely clear one of your seven columns, you can only move a King (and whatever messy stack of cards is sitting on top of it) into that empty space.
The Scorpion's Tail (The Draw): When you are completely out of moves, click your 3-card Stockpile. These three cards are immediately dealt face-up onto the bottoms of the first three columns (one card per column). You only get to do this once per game, so use it as an absolute last resort!