A complete guide to this tenacious solitaire: the seven-column layout, moving cards together with their tail, the life-saving reserve and controls on muta.pro. Read it — and straight to the table.
Scorpion is a single-deck solitaire of 52 cards. Your task is to build four complete single-suit sequences from king down to ace right in the playing columns, without moving them into separate foundations. As soon as a ready chain of thirteen cards of one suit (K, Q, J, 10, 9 … 2, A) is lined up in a column, it is removed from the table. Collect all four suits — and the solitaire is out.
The difficulty is that the cards you need are often locked beneath others. Scorpion forgives almost any moves, but it demands that you count moves ahead so you don't drive yourself into a dead end.
Seven columns are laid out on the table, 49 cards in all. In the first three columns the top row of cards is face down, the rest are face up — their rank and suit are visible. The remaining three cards go into the reserve and are brought into play only when ordinary moves have run out. The game starts right away: no opening moves are needed, you can move any face-up card.
A face-up card can be placed on a card of the same suit that is one rank higher: the nine of hearts onto the ten of hearts, the jack of spades onto the queen of spades. This is how descending single-suit chains are built.
The key feature of Scorpion: a card can be dragged with any “tail” on top of it, even if those cards are jumbled by suit and rank. The whole stack of cards moves as one.
When you remove a card that was lying on top of a face-down one, that card automatically flips face up and enters play. Freeing face-down cards is the key to clearing the pile.
If a column is fully cleared, the freed space can be taken by a king (with its tail). An empty column is a valuable lever for reshuffling.
When there are no moves left, deal the three reserve cards — one on top of each of the first three columns. This often unblocks a stuck position, but the deal is irreversible, so use the reserve last.
A chain of thirteen cards of one suit from king down to ace, lined up in order, is removed from the table. That is your progress toward winning.
The solitaire counts as solved when all four suits are built from king down to ace and removed from the table. On muta.pro points are awarded for progress: flipping a face-down card gives a small addition, completing a full suit a large bonus, and a fast solution adds a time premium. The fewer wasted moves and the faster the game, the higher the final score.
First and foremost, clear cards off the face-down ones to flip as many unknowns as possible — this widens your choice of moves.
The three reserve cards are dealt only once and for good. Use them only when there are no other moves left.
When you move a card with a tail, you drag everything on top. Consider whether you might lock a needed card under the pile.
Try to finish the suit that already has a long chain laid out — that is the shortest path to a removal.
Scorpion is almost always solvable — the trouble is only that the key cards are locked beneath others. So the winner is not the one who makes many moves, but the one who turns over face-down cards in the right order and does not bury what is needed under the pile. The first moves set the outcome: weigh them as seriously as the last.
Every flipped card widens your choice of moves. Give priority to columns with more face-down cards: that is where the main pile is hidden.
When you place a card, try to put it on its own suit rather than “wherever it fits”. A move within a suit causes almost no debts; an off-suit move you will later have to untangle.
An empty column is taken only by a king with its tail. Decide in advance which king you will place there to unload the heaviest column.
The three reserve cards are dealt once and irreversibly. Plan the game as if they were not there, and use them only at a real dead end.
The goal for each suit is a descending same-color chain from king down to ace right in the column.
The main mechanic of Scorpion is moving a card together with any tail on top, even if the tail is jumbled by suit and rank. This is powerful but dangerous: you always drag everything above, so every move must be checked “at the bottom” — what ends up under the moved stack.
Moving the nine of spades onto the ten of spades, you drag the whole tail — the four of diamonds and the queen of clubs — to the new place.
Before dragging a tail, check which card will be freed beneath it. A useful move is one that opens a face-down card or unblocks a needed rank.
Aces go to the bottom of the chain last. If your tail places something on top of a needed ace or two, it will be stuck for a long time.
Sometimes it pays to first lay a couple of cards by suit and then move them as one tail — that leaves fewer intermediate piles.
Scorpion is a relative of Spider, but with its own character: one suit per chain and free tail moving. Within the family there are eases and complications worth knowing, so you can tell where a game is honestly lost and where there is still a resource.
Seven columns, the top row in the first three face down, three cards in the reserve. The variant on muta.pro is exactly this one, with a single reserve deal.
All cards are dealt face up. There are no face-down cards — the game becomes a pure puzzle of counting moves, almost always solvable.
Neighboring variants allow building by color or removing incomplete chains. Remember: in the classic only a complete suit K→A of thirteen cards is removed.
In the classic the top row of the first three columns is face down; in the easy variant those three cards are face up from the start.
Most losses in Scorpion are not an unlucky deal but hasty moves at the start. Let's go over the typical traps that turn a solvable game into a dead end.
You can place the seven of hearts on the eight of clubs, but it is an off-suit move that you will have to untangle later.