Play Grounds for Divorce Solitaire Online for Free (No Signup Required)

Grounds for Divorce plays like Spider, but empty a column and the stock refuses to feed it again, so clearing space costs you dearly.

Grounds for Divorce Solitaire is a two-deck member of the Spider family, and its wry name hints at the patience it demands. The one rule that sets it apart is simple to state and awkward to live with: when you deal from the stock, cards go only to tableau piles that still hold cards. Empty a column and it stays empty until you choose to move a card back into it.

That single restriction changes everything. In ordinary Spider an empty column is a safety valve you can always refill; here, clearing a pile trades short-term progress for a permanently narrower board, so you have to weigh every emptied column against the deals still ahead. Like its Spider cousins, the goal is to build eight complete Ace-to-King runs of a single suit, which are then whisked to the foundations.

Spider Solitaire and Big Spider Solitaire share the same tableau-building foundation this game is built on.

Once you've had enough of the narrower board, Solitaire is the natural place to go next.

If you run into anything odd or have an idea that would make the game better, please contact me.

Enjoy playing!

How to play Grounds for Divorce Solitaire

Layout:

8 foundation piles: Only a complete King-to-Ace run of a single suit may be sent here, and full sequences are moved to the foundations automatically.

10 tableau piles: Dealt five cards each, four face-down and one face-up. Build down regardless of suit. Empty columns may be filled with any available card or sequence.

Stock: Click to deal one card to each tableau pile that is not empty. There is only one pass, with no redeals.

Foundation:

There are eight foundation piles, one for each complete suit run in the two decks.

You do not place cards on the foundations one at a time. Instead, whenever a full sequence of thirteen same-suit cards from King down to Ace is assembled on the tableau, it is removed together to a foundation pile.

The top card of each foundation can be moved back into play if another pile will accept it.

Tableau:

Ten tableau piles laid out side by side, five cards each. Four cards in every pile are face-down and the top card is face-up.

A card can be added to a tableau pile only if it's one rank lower than the pile's current top card, of any suit, so the only card that fits on an 8 is a 7. When the top face-down card of a pile is exposed, it is turned face-up.

Only same-suit sequences may be moved as a group; a run of mixed suits must be relocated one card at a time. Any available card or valid sequence may be placed onto an empty tableau column.

Stock and waste:

There is no waste pile; the cards left after the deal make up the stock.

When you click on the stock, one card is dealt face-up to each tableau pile that still contains cards, skipping any empty columns. There's only one pass through the stock, and there are no redeals, so the final deal may be a partial one when fewer piles remain than cards left.