Spider Mahjong Solitaire: Layout Strategy Guide

What Is the Spider Layout?

The Spider is one of the hard layouts in Mahjong Solitaire. It uses all 144 tiles — the same set every layout uses. From above, the tiles form a spider: a central body in the middle, with eight legs reaching out from it. The legs lie in low stacks, so the whole board is wide rather than tall.

Your goal never changes between layouts. You remove tiles in matching pairs. A tile is free when nothing rests on top of it and at least one side — left or right — is open. Match two free tiles of the same design, and both leave the board. Clear all 144 tiles and you win.

What makes the Spider stand out is its width. Most hard layouts hide tiles by stacking them tall. The Spider does the opposite. It stays low, around three layers, but stretches the tiles across eight arms. That shape spreads the work out, and it asks you to plan across many places at once.

How Is the Spider Built?

Picture the board as one wide, flat shape. The center holds a small, raised body. From that body, eight legs run outward in pairs, fanning across the table. The legs are short and low. The body in the middle stands a little taller and holds the most important tiles.

This is a wide and shallow board, not a deep one. It reaches only about three layers high at the body, and the legs are lower still. Three parts behave in different ways. Knowing them tells you where the easy tiles sit and where the real work waits.

The body is where games are won or lost. Its tiles sit higher and stay pinned until you clear the legs around them. The leg tips look easy, and they are, but they are not the point. Plan most of your moves around opening the body before it gets sealed.

How Do You Start a Spider Game?

Open with the tiles you cannot lose access to. The tip of each leg is free on the very first move. With eight legs, that gives you eight open ends to read right away. None of these tips can be blocked by another tile, so they wait for you while you plan.

Match tips on opposite sides of the body first. If you clear one leg fast and leave the rest, the board tilts and the body stays sealed on that side. Pulling from legs that face each other keeps the whole spider even and keeps your options open.

Then read the whole board before you match much more. The Spider is wide, so use that view. Note which designs you can already see as pairs and which show up only once. A match you can make now may bury a tile you need later. The first minute of looking saves many lost games. For the basics behind every board, see the how to play Mahjong guide.

Spider Strategy: How Do You Manage Eight Legs?

Most lost Spider games are not bad luck. They come from clearing one part of the board while the rest locks up. With eight legs, you have eight fronts to watch. These habits keep all of them moving and keep the body reachable.

• Balance your clearing across the legs. Pull a tile from one leg, then a tile from another. Spread the work so no single arm races ahead while the others stall.
• Do not strand the body. The central body holds the tiles you need most. Clear the inner ends of the legs so the body opens up. If you only chase the easy tips, the body stays locked.
• Do not fully clear one leg while ignoring others. Emptying a single leg feels like progress, but it spends moves you may need elsewhere. Keep every leg in play so you always have an open end to work.
• Watch the four of a kind. Every design appears four times. When three copies are free and the fourth sits in the body, pair two free copies and hold the third to match the buried one later.
• Use unlimited undo to test a line. On this site, undo is unlimited. Try a sequence of moves, and if it dead-ends, step back and take a safer path. This is the fastest way to learn the eight-leg shape.

For tips that apply to every board, not just the Spider, see the Mahjong strategy guide. To learn the tiles themselves, read the Mahjong tiles guide.

How Hard Is the Spider Layout?

The Spider rates as hard. Its difficulty does not come from depth. The board stands only about three layers tall, so few tiles are buried under many others. A tall layout like Temple hides tiles by stacking them deep. The Spider does not work that way.

The Spider is hard because of its many fronts. Eight legs mean eight places to plan and track at the same time. You cannot focus on one corner and ignore the rest. A move on one leg changes what you can reach on the others. Holding all eight in your head is the whole skill.

Most well-shuffled Spider deals can be solved with careful play. When a board turns unwinnable, the cause is usually order — a needed tile gets sealed in the body because you cleared the wrong legs first. Slow down, keep the legs even, and open the body in good time.

How Does the Spider Compare to Other Layouts?

The Spider sits at the hard end of the range, but for a different reason than most. This table places it next to three layouts players often try alongside it.

Notice the Spider is hard with only three layers, while the Turtle is medium with five. Depth alone does not set difficulty. The Spider proves it: width and many fronts can be just as tough. If you want the full picture, the Mahjong layouts guide covers all 35 shapes and what each one asks of you.

Is This the Same as Spider Solitaire?

No. The two games share a name, but they are unrelated. It helps to be clear about which one you mean.

The Spider Mahjong layout is a tile arrangement. It uses 144 Mahjong tiles laid out in a spider shape, and you play it by removing matching pairs. That is the game this page is about.

Spider Solitaire is a different game. It is a card game played with 104 playing cards. You build runs of cards in order, within suits, to clear the table. It has no tiles and no matching pairs.

So while both use the word "Spider," they share nothing else. One is a Mahjong tile layout. The other is a playing-card game. If you came here looking for the Mahjong layout, you are in the right place.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Spider layout hard?

Yes. The Spider rates as hard. It is not hard because it is deep, since it stands only about three layers tall. It is hard because the eight legs give you eight separate fronts to track at once. You must keep all of them moving while you open the central body.

Is Spider Mahjong the same as Spider Solitaire?

No. The Spider Mahjong layout is a tile shape built from 144 Mahjong tiles, played by matching pairs. Spider Solitaire is a card game played with 104 playing cards, where you build runs in suits. They share a name and nothing else. The two games are unrelated.

How many tiles are in Spider Mahjong?

The Spider uses 144 tiles, the full Mahjong Solitaire set. That set holds three suits — circles, bamboo, and characters — plus winds, dragons, flowers, and seasons. Every layout on this site uses these same 144 tiles. Only the arrangement on the board changes from one layout to the next.

Where should you start in the Spider layout?

Start at the leg tips. The tile at the end of each of the eight legs is free on the first move, so those are your easiest matches. Clear tips on opposite sides to keep the legs even. Then work inward and open the taller central body before it locks.