Returning back to the game …
Bart has suggested db, since only column 8 has three face-down cards and “hasn’t been kinged”.
Schistocerca went in more detail, proposing to take all three turnovers at once with the move sequence “db,ia,gh” – conditional on the assumption that no useful cards turn up and causing us to reconsider. Let’s see what Inaslov’s Random Number generator has in store for us:
(move db), Nine of clubs.
Black: The captain has decided to take multiple turnovers, presumably to speed up the game – unless we get some useful cards. I agree. The opening round doesn’t leave much opportunity for an expert player to shine.
(move ia), Nine of spades
Dark Green: Our second bad card in a row.
Red: rot13(Sbe shpx’f fnxr)! You don’t need to vent your frustration at every bad card!
(move gh) Jack of diamonds
Dark Blue: I was thinking perhaps ca instead of ia. The advantage is apparent if the next two cards were Ace and Three. Admittedly the chances of that are remote. But we cannot ignore the fact column 8 … I mean column 9 has fewer face-down cards than column 3.
Purple steals a chance to glare at Dark Blue while White is not looking. At least nobody dropped the S-bomb despite three bad cards in a row, so the team has done something right.
Pink: But the captain has decided otherwise and we must respect his decision. In any case our only legal move is to deal a new row of cards.
Yellow: Unless any of the Stooges wants to move the Ace of Spades onto the Two of Hearts. No takers? Okay let’s deal!
White gives Blue the honor of dealing the next round of cards. He is pleased to see everyone has had a chance to contribute something to the opening round.
Edifying Thoughts of a Spider Solitaire Addict 
Gotta say… I’m not really understanding this “meta-game” or whatever you call it. I don’t know what to look for, and I don’t know how to search for what kind of thing I’m looking for… Kinda like that old game “The Resistance”? In the future I’ll try to give conditional moves ahead, like “if nothing dramatic happens with the turnover, then…”
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Hi Bart,
What you are looking for is players suggesting sub-optimal moves, like building off-suit when you can build in-suit with all other things being equal. And we’re talking about clear-cut cases of suboptimal play, i.e. the legal equivalent of “beyond reasonable doubt”. To avoid any confusion, I may as well stipulate the goal is to remove all eight suits and number of moves don’t matter. There is no partial credit for e.g. removing only one suit before conceding in less than 150 moves.
I was initially toying around with the “Among-Us social deduction” aspect of the game but I am now thinking this would detract from the purpose of this blog which is to improve the reader’s skill at playing Spider Solitaire. Therefore, you can assume there will be no “controlling-the-narrative” shenanigans, e.g. if the Stooges are Red/Blue/Yellow then Red will not try to convince everyone else that Green is a Stooge. In other words, Stooges will only think about playing sub-optimally without arousing suspicion. Yes, tempers will fray after every third turnover but that is mainly for readers looking for cheap laughs 😊
Obviously, it’s impossible to suggest something stupid on the opening moves without getting caught. But there will be plenty of opportunities for the stooges to sabotage the game in later rounds when there are many more cards in play. This is assuming the actual game is not an easy walkover or blow-out loss (which is why I stated upfront this Among-Us format is not guaranteed to work).
By now you should have some rough idea of who are (probably) experts, newcomers or somewhere in between. Of course, being an expert is not synonymous with putting in their best efforts 😊
Hopefully this makes sense.
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