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Scorpion looks like Spider but plays nothing like it. You can pick up any face-up card, no matter how messy the cards on top of it are, and carry the whole lot to a new home.
That freedom is the trap. Every move leaves a jumble somewhere, and untangling it is the real game.
Forty-nine cards are dealt into seven columns of seven. The first four columns each have three face-down cards under four face-up ones. The last three columns are all face up. The remaining three cards wait in the stock.
Complete all four suits in order from King to Ace. Each finished suit moves off the board automatically.
We ran our own solver on 200 shuffled deals of this version. It found a win in 19 of 200 (10%), showed that 60 could not be won, and ran out of its budget of 20,000 positions a deal on 121.
Those undecided deals may still be winnable, so treat the win count as a minimum. The solver can see every card, including face-down ones, so it measures what the cards allow, not how often a person will win.
Love Scorpion? Try these other solitaire variants on Solitaire Scramble:
Spider uses two decks and only lets you move runs that are already in suit order. Scorpion uses one deck and lets you move any face-up card with whatever is on top of it.
Not to build on. You put the suits together in the columns, and a finished King-to-Ace suit leaves the board by itself.
Any time you like here. Many players deal early, so they can see the cards while there is still room to use them.
Only the empty column rule. Scorpion accepts Kings only. Wasp accepts any card or group, which makes it noticeably easier.