Simple Simon: every card on show, and most deals winnable
Simple Simon is Spider's one-pack little sibling. All 52 cards are dealt face up in a staircase of ten columns, there is no stock, and your job is to sort the cards into four complete suits from King down to Ace. Nothing is hidden, so every game is a pure puzzle.
How winnable is it? Our solver took on 3,000 deals under this site's rules. It found a win in 86.5%, proved 5.2% impossible, and ran out of budget on 8.3%. So between 86.5% and 94.8% of deals can be won.
There is one honest caveat, and we explain it in full below: our figure is lower than the one in the best-known published study, and we have not yet found out why.
At a glance: Simple Simon in numbers
| What we measured | Result | Deals | How |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deals the solver won | 86.5% (95% range 85.3–87.7%) | 3,000 | Solver, every card visible (as in the game), 200,000 positions per deal |
| Deals proven impossible | 5.2% (4.4–6.0%) | 3,000 | Same solver |
| Deals left undecided | 8.3% | 3,000 | Ran past the budget |
| Winnable share, best estimate | between 86.5% and 94.8% | 3,000 | Solved, up to solved plus undecided |
| Same-suit links already in place in the deal | 0.76 on average | 3,000 | Counted from the deal |
| Published winnable share | 97.450% (±0.034%) | 1,000,000 | Blake & Gent, 2026 |
The rules on this site
- One pack of 52 cards, all face up.
- Ten tableau columns in a staircase: three columns of 8, then 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1.
- No stock and no free cells.
- You may place a card on any card one rank higher, of any suit.
- Only a run in the same suit may be moved as a unit, and there is no limit on its length.
- Any card or same-suit run may go into an empty column.
- A complete suit from King down to Ace in one column is removed automatically. Remove all four to win.
What the numbers tell you
You start almost from scratch
On average a deal has fewer than one same-suit link already in place (0.76). Almost all the sorting is up to you.
Most losses are fixable
With at least 86.5% of deals winnable, a stuck game is far more often a wrong turn than a bad deal. Undo is the right response.
Some deals are hopeless from the first move
Our solver proved 5.2% of deals impossible. A few are dead from the very start: in deal 81 of our test, no legal move exists at all in the opening position.
Why the staircase layout matters
The columns run from eight cards down to one, so the table is lopsided from the start. The three tall columns on the left hold 24 of the 52 cards, nearly half the pack, while the four shortest columns on the right hold just 10 between them. That shape is the game's built-in help: the right-hand side gives you quick empty columns, and the left-hand side is where the real digging happens. Plan your first ten or so moves around turning that short side into working space.
Strategy for Simple Simon
Mixed-suit building is a stepping stone
You may put any 6 on any 7, but only a same-suit run can move as a unit. Use mixed-suit builds to get cards out of the way, then sort them into suits as space appears.
The short columns are your first empty space
The staircase gives you columns of one and two cards. Clearing one early gives you an empty column, and in Simple Simon any card can fill it.
Work on one suit at a time
A complete suit is removed from the table as soon as it is finished, freeing a column's worth of room. Pick the suit that is least buried and finish it first.
Don't bury a King's run
A finished suit has to be built in one column from King down. Avoid covering a King with cards of another suit if you can.
Playing Simple Simon here
Simple Simon is free and runs in any modern browser on a computer, tablet or phone. There is no download, no installation and no sign-up, and no email is needed. Cards are large and clear with a zoom control; Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart and Auto Play are always there; and you can drag or tap to move cards. Wins, time and moves are tracked for the current game, and sound, fullscreen and table colour are all adjustable.
How we did the research, step by step
The free-solitaire.nz team ran this study in September 2026 to measure how winnable Simple Simon is on this site.
- Read the rules from the site's code. Simple Simon is a branch of the site's Spider engine: ten face-up columns of 8, 8, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1, building down in any suit, same-suit runs moving as a unit with no length limit, any card in a space, and complete suits removed automatically.
- Rebuilt the game as a program and checked that it follows those rules.
- Dealt 3,000 numbered games, seeds 1 to 3,000, so every deal can be replayed exactly.
- Chose a solver. Every card is face up, so the solver knows exactly what you know. For each deal it finds a win, proves there is none, or runs out of budget.
- Ran it with a budget of 200,000 positions per deal.
- Compared with published research, and found a gap. Blake and Gent (2026, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research) report 97.450% of Simple Simon deals winnable, from a million deals, which means at most about 2.55% are impossible. We proved 5.2% impossible (95% range 4.4–6.0%). Our figure does not match the published one, and we have not yet found the reason. The site's rules appear to match the rule table in the paper. To make sure our "impossible" verdicts were not a bug, we re-checked six of them with a separate, plain brute-force search, and it confirmed all six. Until the gap is explained, treat our Simple Simon figures with some caution.
- Worked out the margin of error. The solved share is 86.5% with a 95% range of 85.3–87.7%: repeat the test with fresh deals and the true figure lands there 95 times in 100.
- Stated the limits. 8.3% of deals were undecided, so the winnable share is a range, 86.5–94.8%, not a single number.
The technical side
Simple Simon was simulated in Python 3.11 using just the standard library. Simple Simon shares a module, spiderlike.py, with Scorpion. The solver is a best-first search: it always explores the most promising position next and keeps a table of positions it has already seen, so none is searched twice. The separate cross-check is verify_simplesimon_bruteforce.py, which searches exhaustively without any of the main solver's shortcuts. A shared runner.py spreads the deals across parallel worker processes with Python's multiprocessing, each deal is shuffled from its own numbered seed, and the 95% ranges are Wilson score intervals. We used an AI assistant (Claude, by Anthropic) to help write and review the code and draft this page. The AI did not produce any of the figures: they all come from running the solver, and the team compared them with the published study, which is how we found the gap described above.
By Admin, free-solitaire.nz. Study date: 19 September 2026.
Frequently asked questions
How many Simple Simon games can be won?
Our solver says between 86.5% and 94.8% of deals. A published study puts it at 97.45%; we explain the difference above.
Why can't I move my mixed-suit run?
Only runs of a single suit move as a unit. Mixed-suit cards have to be moved one at a time or re-sorted first.
Is Simple Simon like Spider?
Yes. It uses the same idea of building suits from King to Ace, but with one pack, no stock and every card face up. Try Spider Solitaire for the two-pack version.
What can go in an empty column?
Any card, or any same-suit run.
What should I try next?
Try Scorpion for a much tougher suit-sorting game, or FreeCell for another all-face-up puzzle.