I will only give the general plans and avoid giving exact move sequences. Verifying this is all legit is left as the proverbial exercise for the reader.
As a general rule, being able to visualise long move sequences is an essential ingredient to playing well at Spider Solitaire. If you struggle with this, I recommend you play with “pseudo-undo” i.e. undo is allowed provided you don’t gain information you’re not entitled to by turning over a card or dealing from the stock (note that removing a suit does not gain information). If you pardon the terrible cliché, practice makes perfect!
Another useful tip is this sort of situation is to start with the following question: “Can I remove a suit if I were willing to trash my board in every way possible?” If the answer is yes, then a more careful analysis will often yield a way to remove a suit without trashing up the board so badly. Of course, there are cases where prematurely removing a suit does cause the loss of a winnable game – but if you’re able to find a move sequence that completes a suit, then you should be good enough to work out if removing a suit is desirable.
- Clear columns 2, 3
- Extract the C4:Kc
- Expose the C0:7h
- Clear columns 7,10
- Order column 8
- Tidy up
- More tidying up
By this stage even my Ninja Monkey friend is claiming the game is won.
- Clear the Spades
The rest of the game is just a formality so the moves are omitted. The identity of the remaining face-down cards are available in the screen-dump below:
And that brings us to the end of the game. Well played Steve!
Edifying Thoughts of a Spider Solitaire Addict 
Congratulations! I did read the book many months ago (years?) so I did follow along that hand at the time — to some degree. I haven’t yet seen fit to look at these last two, though.
I have an idea for another thing to do (were you looking for such a thing). I’ll play a game until I get to a point where there is what looks like a fairly major decision to make and I’m not sure what to do. Then I’ll email you the position with the pros and cons as I see them, and if you think it’s interesting enough, you can make a post and tell us all what you would do. Or you can ignore it. Or maybe you can come up with a similar hand. A Zen-like spider exists: spider 8-suit! Or how about one with 3 spade suits, 2 heart suits, 1 diamond suit, 1 club suit, and 1 gnome suit.
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Hi Bart, I googled but can’t find the Zen-like 8-suit version you speak of. Link please?
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Sorry to give the wrong impression. I am not aware of any software support for that version or that other people even think about it. I was just thinking of it conceptually, with 8 completely different suits and no duplicate of any card. It’s the natural extension from 1-suit, 2-suit, and 4-suit. I suppose if you wanted to try it with ordinary cards, you could do it with (say) one large-print deck and another normal-print deck. I don’t recommend it… Just thinking about it. I called it “Zen” from the idea that you would always lose and could spiritually grow from that.
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I had mentioned before this idea of getting to a complicated position, recording it, and seeing what you would do and if it’s different. Here’s one example
(4) 4s kcqk 6s5s4s3s 2c as 2hah
(0) kdqd 8h
(2) 9h 8s khqhjh tc9c8c7c6c5c
(3) ksqs
(0) 3s2s
(0)
(1) kdqdjdtd9d8d7d6d5d4d 3c 2dad 4c3c 2dad
(4) td ks qhjhth 9c 8h7h6h5h4h 9d 8s7s6s 5d 4h3h
(0) 6c5c
(0) 6h5h kcqc
2 deals left
15+3+13+5+2+0+18+22+2+4 + 10+10 = 104
I don’t know if you have any way of putting that into a format you can work with (other than real cards). From that position I see lots of simplifications and can come close to removing the heart suit but can’t quite. For irreversible moves I did a-h (2A of hearts onto the 3) and g-i (4c onto 5c). And at the end I have a space and (3) ksqs in column d. Should I put the king in the space, or some innocuous card? That’s just an example, to perhaps help you see if there’s any merit in this idea at all.
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