Penelope's Web is Streets and Alleys with a single rule changed, and it turns a hard game into a very hard one. The deal is the same: all 52 cards face up in eight piles, four of seven and four of six, with the Aces buried wherever the shuffle left them. The build is the same: down by rank regardless of suit, one card at a time. The difference is what happens when a pile empties. In Streets and Alleys any card may take the space. In Penelope's Web only a King may. The game's name is the point: like Penelope's weaving, progress made by day is easily undone, because the one escape a blocked position had is closed to almost every card. No stock, no waste, no redeal. Free in your browser, no sign-up.
Goal: build all four foundations from Ace to King by suit.
Wins are rare in this game, and the players who get them share a few habits.
Penelope's Web is a member of the open castle family that descends from Beleaguered Castle: games with no stock, nothing hidden, and single-card moves, where the whole challenge is the order of the dig. Streets and Alleys is the family's version with the Aces left in the deal; Penelope's Web is Streets and Alleys with its spaces closed to all but Kings. The same tightening applied to Citadel gives Exiled Kings, and applied to Baker's Dozen gives Portuguese Solitaire. It appears in the PySol Fan Club collection, in Thomas Warfield's Pretty Good Solitaire, and in BVS Solitaire's castle group, whose rule page ends with the honest warning that "wins are rare".
The name comes from Homer. Penelope, waiting for Odysseus, promised her suitors an answer when she finished weaving a shroud, and unpicked each day's work at night. The game earns the comparison: a position that looks won can be undone by a single King sitting where a space is needed, and the closed spaces mean there is rarely a way to buy that King a home.
If you enjoy this shape, try Streets and Alleys to feel what open spaces give back, or Beleaguered Castle, where the Aces are founded before the deal and the game is far kinder.
One rule. Both games deal the same eight piles of seven and six, build down by rank regardless of suit, and move one card at a time. In Streets and Alleys an empty pile accepts any card. In Penelope's Web an empty pile accepts only a King. That single change removes the family's main escape route and is why the game is rated very difficult.
Only a King. Any other card is refused, and because sequences cannot move together a King always arrives alone. A space is therefore worth exactly one thing: a home for one King you need out of the way.
No. Unlike Beleaguered Castle, the Aces are dealt into the tableau wherever the shuffle put them, and each must be uncovered by building the cards above it onto other piles before its suit can start.
No. Only the top card of a pile moves, one card per move, even when the cards below it are already in perfect descending order.
Not often. It is a very strict form of Beleaguered Castle: only one card moves at a time, even from a finished run, and the closed spaces leave little room. Because nothing is hidden, a loss is always a planning outcome rather than bad luck, and the game tells you the moment no legal move remains.
No. All 52 cards are dealt face up at the start. There is no stock to turn and no redeal, so every decision is made with complete information.