Scorpion Solitaire

• Turn over the face-down cards before anything elseTwelve of fifty-two are hidden and every one of them is a card you cannot plan around. A move that exposes a face-down card is almost always better than a move that tidies a sequence you can already see.
• Do not spend the stock earlyThree cards, dealt once, landing on the first three columns whether you want them there or not. Save them for a position where you genuinely have no move, because after that there is nothing left to change the board with.
• Treat a King as the key to an empty column, not as clutterUnder standard rules an empty column can only ever hold a King, so a King buried under six cards is a column you will never be able to use. Digging one out early is often worth several ordinary moves.
• Look for the card that unlocks two things at onceBecause building is same-suit only, most cards have exactly one home. The moves worth hunting for are the ones where placing a card both empties useful space and uncovers something — in a game this tight, a move that does one job is usually not enough.
• Undo is not cheating here, it is the only lookahead you haveWith no foundations and one stock deal, a bad choice can end the deal thirty moves later with no warning. Trying a line and taking it back is how you find out what a move costs before you have to live with it.

1. 1Deal seven columns of sevenForty-nine cards. In the four leftmost columns the first three cards are dealt face down; every other card is face up. Three cards are held back in the stock.
2. 2Pick up any face-up card and everything on itNo sequence is required. A face-up card can be lifted with the entire stack resting on top of it, however jumbled that stack is.
3. 3Build down in the same suitA card may only be placed on a card one rank higher of its own suit. A red seven does not go on a black eight here — only on the eight of its own suit.
4. 4Only a King fills an empty columnAn empty column is worth very little unless a King is loose somewhere. Under Wasp rules any card may go there instead, which changes the game completely.
5. 5Deal the three stock cards when you are stuckThey go face up, one each to the first three columns. This happens exactly once in the game; there is no redeal and no second chance.
6. 6Finish with four suited runs in the tableauThere are no foundations. The game is won when four columns hold complete King-to-Ace runs, each in a single suit, and the remaining three columns are empty.

The long version, with worked examples and the questions beginners actually ask, is on how to play scorpion solitaire.

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