Scorpion Solitaire: a deal you can read at a glance, and a game that often can't be won
Scorpion looks friendly. Seven columns of seven, most of the cards face up, only three cards left in the stock. You can move any face-up card together with everything on top of it. It feels as though you should be able to see your way to a win.
Very often you can't. Even a solver that could see every hidden card and the stock proved 67.5% of 3,000 deals impossible on this site's rules. It found a win in 12.9%, and the remaining 19.6% were unfinished, so at most 32.5% of Scorpion deals can be won by anyone. That makes reading the deal especially important: part of playing Scorpion well is recognising a lost cause.
The Scorpion deal, measured
| What we measured | Result | Deals | How |
|---|---|---|---|
| At least one King starts face down | 65.2% (95% range 63.4–66.9%) | 3,000 | Deal inspection |
| Solved when 2 or more Kings start face down | 14.0% (11.5–16.8%) | 645 | Solver that sees every card |
| Solved when no King starts face down | 12.1% (10.2–14.2%) | 1,045 | Same solver |
| Solved, all deals | 12.9% (11.7–14.1%) | 3,000 | Best-first solver, 200,000-position limit: a ceiling |
| Proven impossible | 67.5% (65.8–69.2%) | 3,000 | Same solver |
| Unfinished at the search limit | 19.6% | 3,000 | Same solver |
We found no published figure for Scorpion to compare with.
Scorpion rules on klondike.nz
The layout
- One pack of 52 cards.
- Seven columns of seven cards (49 cards). In the first four columns, the top three cards are face down; everything else is face up. That makes 12 hidden cards on the table.
- The last three cards form the stock.
Moves
- A card may go onto the next higher card of the same suit: the 4 of diamonds on the 5 of diamonds.
- You can move any face-up card, together with all the cards on top of it, even if they are not in order.
- Only a King, with whatever sits on it, may go into an empty column.
- At any time, you can deal the stock: one card onto each of the first three columns.
- When a column holds a complete suit from King down to Ace, it is removed. You win when all four suits are cleared.
Reading the deal
Look under the face-down cards first
The twelve hidden cards sit at the top of the first four columns, under four face-up cards each. Uncovering them is the first job in almost every game.
Buried Kings are common, and matter less than expected
In 65.2% of our deals at least one King started face down. You might expect that to ruin a deal, since Kings are the only cards allowed into empty columns. Our solver disagreed: deals with two or more buried Kings were solved 14.0% of the time, deals with none 12.1%, and the ranges overlap. A buried King is not in itself a reason to give up.
Look for "locked" suits
Because building is by suit, a card can be trapped if the card it needs to go on sits beneath it in the same column. For example, if the 6 of spades lies somewhere beneath the 7 of spades in the same column, the 6 can't reach the 7 until the 7, and everything on it, has been moved elsewhere. Several of these knots in one deal are a strong sign of a hard game.
Strategy
Use the big move, carefully
Being able to move any face-up card with everything above it is Scorpion's great power. Use it to put cards on their same-suit neighbours, but notice what you drag along: the pile you move comes with its own problems.
Empty a column for a King
Only Kings can fill a space, so an empty column is valuable only if a King is ready to go there, ideally one with cards you want to relocate.
Hold the three stock cards back
The three stock cards land on the first three columns, whenever you choose. Deal them when they will do least damage, typically once those columns are in a state where an extra card on top won't block anything important.
Know when to stop
With at least 67.5% of deals impossible even with every card known, many Scorpion games simply cannot be won. If the hidden cards reveal a knot you can't untie, a new deal is a perfectly sensible choice.
A first-minute check for Scorpion
- Look at the four columns with hidden cards and decide which to open first: usually the one where the four face-up cards can most easily move onto same-suit neighbours.
- Find the Kings that are face up. Each one is a candidate for an empty column.
- Spot any same-suit knots, where a lower card sits beneath a higher one of its suit.
- Decide roughly when the three stock cards should come out.
Similar games
If you like the any-card move, Yukon and Alaska share it with friendlier odds. For in-suit building with completed suits removed, try Spider or Simple Simon.
Playing Scorpion on klondike.nz
Free, with nothing to download or sign up for, in any modern browser on a computer, tablet or phone. The cards are large and clear, with a zoom control, and you can drag or tap to move. Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart and Auto Play are all available, and wins, time and moves are tracked.
Where these numbers come from
The klondike.nz team measured Scorpion in September 2026 from the rules in this site's code.
- Rules from our code. The game's Scorpion settings: seven columns of seven with three face-down cards in each of the first four; a three-card stock dealt onto the first three columns at any time; in-suit building; any face-up group can move; Kings only into spaces; completed suits removed.
- A program copy of the game. We built Scorpion in a program shared with Simple Simon.
- Numbered deals. 3,000 deals from numbered seeds, so the test can be repeated exactly.
- Reading each deal. We counted face-down Kings and split the results by that count.
- The solver. It knows the 12 hidden cards and the 3 stock cards, which you don't, so its results are a ceiling.
- A separate check. A completely separate brute-force search confirmed the solver's "impossible" verdict on both of the deals we tested it on. That is a spot check, not a full re-run.
- Error bars. The 95% range for "proven impossible" is 65.8–69.2%.
- Limits. Nearly a fifth of deals were unfinished, so the true winnable share lies between 12.9% and 32.5%, and a real player, who can't see the hidden cards, will win less often than that.
Under the bonnet
The code is written in Python 3.11 with only the standard library, in the module spiderlike.py, which also runs Simple Simon. The solver is a best-first search with a limit of 200,000 positions per deal that keeps a record of positions already seen. The brute-force cross-check lives in verify_scorpion_bruteforce.py. Deals are spread over processor cores with multiprocessing, and ranges are Wilson score 95% intervals. Claude, an AI assistant from Anthropic, helped us write and review the code and draft this page; every figure comes from running the code.
Questions players ask
Is it me, or is Scorpion just hard?
Because many deals can't be won at all. Even with every card known, at least 67.5% of our deals were impossible.
Does the pile I move have to be in order?
Yes. Any face-up card can be moved with everything on top of it, as long as that card goes onto its same-suit neighbour or a King goes into an empty column.
Is there a best time for the three stock cards?
Whenever it does the least harm to the first three columns. You can choose the moment.
Where are the foundations?
There aren't any. A complete suit from King to Ace is removed from the table when you build it in a column.
Who measured this?
The klondike.nz team; see our about page.
By Admin, klondike.nz. Study date: 19 September 2026.