Scorpion Solitaire: a tough little game with a sting in its tail

Scorpion looks gentle at first glance: one pack, seven tidy columns, and almost all of the cards showing. Then you start playing and discover why it has its name. Building has to be in suit, only Kings may fill an empty column, and there is just one small handful of spare cards to help you. Scorpion is a game of careful digging, and the wins are rare enough to feel special.

This page explains the layout, the rules as they work on this site, some tactics that genuinely help, and an honest account of what our testing found. Fair warning: the numbers show that many deals simply cannot be won.

How the scorpion is laid out

• One pack of 52 cards.
• Seven columns of seven cards. In the first four columns, the top three cards are face down and the rest face up. The last three columns are entirely face up.
• A stock of three cards is held back.
• There are no foundation piles to build in the usual way. Instead, when a column holds a full run of one suit from King down to Ace, that run is cleared from the table automatically.

The rules of Scorpion

Beating the scorpion

Arrange each suit into a single run from King down to Ace in the tableau. Each finished run is removed straight away; clear all four and the game is yours.

Picking up and moving stacks

• A card may go onto the card one rank higher of the same suit: the 5 of diamonds on the 6 of diamonds.
• You may pick up any face-up card together with everything on top of it, whether or not those cards are in order, as long as the card you pick up fits where it lands.
• A face-down card turns over when it is uncovered.
• Only a King, with whatever is on top of it, may go into an empty column.

The three spare cards

• Clicking the stock deals its three cards, one each onto the bottom of the first three columns.
• You may do this at any time, but only once, because there are only three cards.

Why Scorpion stings

Three rules make Scorpion hard.

In-suit building gives every card exactly one landing spot in the whole tableau: the card of its own suit one rank higher. If that card is buried, your card has nowhere to go.

Kings only in empty columns means an empty column is useful only when a King is ready to move into it.

Almost no reserve. Three stock cards are all the help you get, and nine cards start face down in the first four columns.

The generous rule is the Yukon-style group move: being able to carry a whole untidy stack on top of the card you pick up. Used well, that is your main tool for digging out buried cards.

Tactics that help

Free the face-down cards first

The twelve face-down cards in the first four columns are the big unknown. Aim your early moves at uncovering them, so you can see what you are working with.

Think about which King goes where

When you clear a column, the King you move in becomes the base of a whole suit's run. Choose the King whose suit is easiest to follow down, or the one that frees the most useful cards when it moves.

Look for the single landing spot

Before every move, ask where the card you are uncovering could possibly go. In Scorpion there is only one answer for each card, so check that its spot is reachable.

Save the stock for when it helps

You can deal the three stock cards at any time. Holding them back until you know which columns could use a new card, or at least not be harmed by one, is usually wise.

Try, then step back if it stings

With so few options, one wrong move can seal a game. Try things, and step back when they do not work.

What the numbers say about Scorpion

We tested 3,000 numbered deals with a solver that is allowed to peek: it can see the twelve face-down cards and the three stock cards, which no player can. That means its results are the best case, a ceiling on what anyone could achieve.

So on this site's rules, at least two deals in three cannot be won by anyone, however good. At most 32.5% of deals are winnable, and that is with perfect knowledge of the hidden cards. For a real player the share will be lower again.

That changes how to think about Scorpion. A loss is usually the deal, not you. The satisfaction is in the games you do win, and in knowing you squeezed everything out of the ones you did not.

We also checked whether buried Kings make things worse. In 65% of deals at least one King starts face down, but the effect on the result was small: 14.0% of deals with two or more hidden Kings were solved, against 12.1% of deals with none.

Scorpion on solitaire-free.nz

Scorpion is free on solitaire-free.nz and plays in any modern browser on a computer, tablet or phone. There is no download, no sign-up and no email. The cards are large and clear, and a zoom control makes them bigger if you like. Drag cards or tap a card and then where it should go. Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart and Auto Play are available at every step, and the game tracks your wins, time and moves. You can switch the sound off, go fullscreen and choose your table colour.

Where our numbers come from, one step at a time

The solitaire-free.nz team ran this study in September 2026, with Scorpion's rules exactly as they work on this page.

1. Rules from the game code. Seven columns of seven, three face-down cards in each of the first four, a three-card stock dealt to the first three columns at any time, in-suit building, any face-up group can move, Kings only in empty columns, and completed King-to-Ace suits removed automatically.
2. A program that plays those rules and nothing else.
3. 3,000 numbered deals, each shuffled from a seed number so the test can be repeated with identical cards.
4. A thoughtful solver. It knows the face-down cards and the stock, so its figure is a ceiling rather than a realistic win rate. It searched up to 200,000 positions per deal.
5. Every deal sorted into solved, proven impossible or undecided.
6. A second opinion. We re-checked two of the deals the solver called impossible with a separate brute-force search, written independently, and it agreed both times.
7. Published research. We found no published figure for Scorpion to compare with.
8. Limits. Nearly one deal in five was left undecided, so the true winnable share lies somewhere between 12.9% and 32.5%, and real players, who cannot peek, will win less than that.

The nuts and bolts

The simulation is written in Python 3.11 using only the standard library. Scorpion shares a module, spiderlike.py, with Simple Simon, since both are members of the Spider family. The solver is a best-first search: it keeps the most promising positions at the front of a queue, explores those first, and keeps a record of positions already visited so nothing is searched twice. A shared runner hands the deals out across the computer's processor cores with multiprocessing, and every deal comes from a numbered seed. The 95% ranges are Wilson score intervals.

An AI assistant, Claude by Anthropic, helped us write and check the code and draft this page. The AI did not create any figures: every number above is the output of the simulation, and our team checked the study against published research before publishing.

By Admin, solitaire-free.nz. Study date: September 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Why does a finished suit disappear?

In Scorpion, a complete run of one suit from King to Ace is removed automatically. That is how cards leave the table.

Can a jumbled stack be moved together?

Yes. You can pick up any face-up card with everything on top of it. Only the card you pick up has to fit where it lands.

What is the best moment for the three spare cards?

Whenever you like, but only once. Many players wait until they can see which columns would benefit.

Is it normal to lose most games?

Yes. On this site's rules, at least 67.5% of deals cannot be won even by a solver that sees every card.

What is a gentler game in the same style?

Try Yukon Solitaire, which has the same group moves but builds in alternating colours, or Spider Solitaire with one suit. The full list is on our games page, and more reading is on the blog.