# Spider Solitaire - credits and notes

**The game.** Spider is a two-deck solitaire first described in 1949; its name refers to the eight
foundations (a spider's eight legs) that must be completed to win. It became the most played game on
Windows PCs through the version Microsoft bundled from Windows XP onward, which fixed the details most
players know today: one, two or four suits, ten columns dealt 6-6-6-6-5-5-5-5-5-5 with only the last
card face up, a stock of fifty dealt ten at a time and never onto an empty column, same-suit runs
moving together, completed suits lifted off for 100 points, a score starting at 500 that loses a
point per move and per undo, hints, and statistics.

**This recreation** (https://spider-solitaire.skillsafe.ai/) is an independent browser implementation
of those rules: Beginner / Intermediate / Advanced difficulties, the 54-card deal, the empty-column
deal rule, 500 - moves + 100 per suit scoring with one-point undos, hints on H or M and by clicking
the score panel (the Windows XP way), per-difficulty statistics with best score and streaks, the
resign prompt, F2 / F3 / F4 / F5 / Ctrl+Z, and a classic window with a status bar.

Additions that the original did not have, labelled as such: numbered deals with shareable links
(this page's own numbering, 1 to 1000000 per difficulty - not the numbering of any other program),
a Deal a Row menu item and D key, drag and drop, double-click to the best place, a timer, and the
game in progress surviving a reload.

Everything here - the card faces and back, the window dressing, the help text and the code - is
original work. Nothing was copied from any Microsoft product, and this page is not affiliated with or
endorsed by Microsoft. "Windows" is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

The code is released under the MIT licence; see LICENSE.txt.

References: Wikipedia, "Microsoft Spider Solitaire" and "Spider (solitaire)" (rules, difficulties,
scoring, undo and hint behaviour).