How many decks does Big Spider use?

Three, which is 156 cards. That means three copies of every single card in the pack, and twelve completed suit runs to assemble instead of Spider's eight.

How is it different from Spider apart from the size?

It is not. Every rule about building, lifting, collecting and dealing is Spider's, unchanged. What differs is thirteen columns instead of ten, three packs instead of two, and twelve sets instead of eight.

Does having three copies of each card make it easier?

It makes individual decisions more forgiving, because the card you need is more likely to exist somewhere reachable. It does not make the game shorter — there is simply much more to sort.

Why is Spiderwort listed as another name?

The PySol Fan Club collection records Spiderwort as an alternative name for this game. This catalogue lists it as Big Spider, the name it is registered under, but the rules are identical either way.

How does the stock work?

It deals one card onto every column at once — thirteen cards per deal, six deals in total — and there is no redeal. It also refuses to deal while any column is empty, so gaps must be filled first.

What can go into an empty column?

Any card, or any same-suit descending run. With thirteen columns you get more chances to clear one than in Spider, and an empty column is still the most valuable thing on the board.

Big Spider Solitaire - Play Online & 100% Free

Play Big Spider Solitaire — Three Packs, Thirteen Columns, Twelve Sets

Big Spider is Spider scaled up until the board fills the screen. Three full packs — 156 cards — are spread across thirteen columns, and instead of eight completed runs you need twelve. Every rule is Spider's: drop a card on any card one rank above it, lift only a same-suit sequence, and a King-to-Ace run of one suit leaves the board. What changes is the arithmetic. There are more columns to work with, more cards to sort, and three of every card in the pack instead of two. Free in your browser, no sign-up.

How Do You Play Big Spider?

Goal: collect all twelve suit runs, King down to Ace.

Setup

Decks: three standard decks, 156 cards.
Tableau: thirteen columns of six cards (78 in all), with only the last card of each face up.
Stock: the remaining 78 cards, dealt as six rows of thirteen. No redeal.
Scoreboard: twelve slots, one for each completed set.

Rules

Place a card on any card one rank higher, whatever its suit.
A same-suit descending sequence travels as a unit. A run that changes suit must be moved a card at a time.
An empty column takes any card or any same-suit run.
A run of thirteen cards in one suit, King down to Ace, is collected off the board automatically.
The stock deals one card onto every column at once — thirteen cards a time, six times — and will not deal while any column stands empty.
You win when all twelve sets have been collected.

Big Spider Strategy

Scaling Spider up does not simply make it longer. Three of every card changes which moves are safe, and thirteen columns changes what a space is worth.

Duplicates are the whole difference. With three copies of every card, the 8 of hearts you need is far more likely to turn up than in two-deck Spider — so blocking one under a foreign suit is less disastrous, and hoarding a card "in case" is less useful. Play more freely than you would in Spider proper.
Thirteen columns is a lot of room; use it. Wide boards reward spreading out. Rather than stacking one enormous column, keep several medium ones so that more top cards are available as landing spots at any moment.
An empty column is still the best thing you can own. It holds any card or run, and with thirteen columns you have more chances to clear one. Remember that the stock refuses to deal while a gap is open, so the rhythm is: clear it, use it, refill it, deal.
Six deals of thirteen cards is a lot of burial. Every deal drops 13 new cards across the board. Before you deal, make sure the suits you are close to finishing are somewhere you will not have to dig them out again.
Turn hidden cards relentlessly. Sixty-five of the seventy-eight dealt cards start face down. Until you have exposed a good share of them you are working on a fraction of the real board.

Big Spider, or Spiderwort

Big Spider is registered in the PySol Fan Club collection as a Spider variant played with three packs across thirteen rows, with Spiderwort recorded as an alternative name. Its class does two things and nothing else: widen the board to thirteen columns, and deal five hidden rows plus one turned row rather than Spider's slightly uneven arrangement. Every rule about building, lifting, collecting and dealing is inherited unchanged from Spider itself.

Three-pack solitaires are uncommon, and the reason is usually that they take a long time without becoming more interesting. Big Spider avoids that because the extra pack changes something real: with three copies of every card, the probability that a needed card exists somewhere reachable goes up sharply, so the game is less about protecting scarce cards and more about managing a very large working area. Whether that is an improvement is a matter of taste, but it is genuinely a different problem.

It is also the widest board in this catalogue — thirteen columns beside a scoreboard of twelve — and it was the game that made the shared Spider engine stop treating pack count as a choice between one and two.

Its siblings change a rule instead of a size. Tarantula lets same-colour runs travel; Black Widow lets any run travel; Grounds for a Divorce bends the ranks into a cycle. For the two-deck original, play Spider; for a quick one-deck game, Spiderette.

One honest note on difficulty. PySolFC rates Big Spider mostly skill, and no published win rate for it that we can find carries a method or a sample size, so this page quotes none. Expect a long game: twelve sets and 156 cards take considerably more moves than Spider, even when the extra duplicates make individual decisions more forgiving.