The History of Spider Solitaire
A two-deck patience game with no exact birth certificate, like most of the family it belongs to - but one whose modern fame traces back to the very same company that made Klondike a household name.
An Undocumented Favorite
Unlike some card games with a traceable inventor, Spider Solitaire's exact origin is not precisely documented - like many patience games, it evolved through popular play rather than being credited to any one person or a single first publication. What is clear is that by the early-to-mid 20th century, it had already become a well-established favorite among the family of two-deck patience games played on paper and felt long before computers existed.
Its name almost certainly nods to its own difficulty and structure rather than to any spider imagery on the cards: eight foundation-like runs to weave together (echoing a spider's eight legs) out of ten sprawling tableau columns, with no color or foundation-suit help along the way once four suits are in play.
Bundled With Windows
Spider Solitaire's most famous moment of mass popularization came in 1998, when Microsoft bundled it as a built-in game in Windows - first appearing in the Windows 98 Plus! pack and the Windows Me era, then becoming a standard inclusion from Windows XP onward.
That one decision introduced Spider to a huge global audience the same way Windows had earlier done for Klondike (simply called "Solitaire") and later for FreeCell - turning a card game that had lived quietly on physical card tables for decades into one of the most-played pieces of software in the world, all without its players ever needing to own an actual deck of cards.
This Version
PaperGames plays the standard rules with all three traditional suit-count difficulties selectable up front - 1 suit, 2 suits, or the full 4-suit game - the same lower-friction, fresh-shuffle-every-game approach this collection's Klondike and FreeCell already use, adapted for Spider's own ten-column, no-foundation layout.