Talon: Solitaire & Spider

About Talon: Solitaire & Spider

Talon, the solitaire card game that plays fair. Klondike and Spider, free and offline, with a daily deal shared by every player.

Free, and all of it. Both games, all five levels, the daily deal, the four themes: it is all there the first time you open the app. No lives to wait for, no levels to unlock, no coins to collect. You open it, you play.

What it costs — may as well tell you straight away: an ad turns up now and then between two games. Never while you are playing. Never on the daily deal. And zero banners — the table is yours, top to bottom.

Would rather see none at all? A single purchase takes them away. Once, and that is that.

Everything plays offline. A card game that never asks you for anything. On the tube, on a plane, at the bottom of the garden: you never need a network. Deals, the daily deal and challenge codes are worked out on your phone, without touching a single server.


★ YOU PLAY AGAINST THE BEST SOLUTION, NOT AGAINST CHANCE

Every deal has been solved in advance by a solver. So you know two things no other patience game tells you: the game is winnable, and there is a solution in a certain number of moves.

That number is the par. You are told it right at the start of the game, like in golf. Going under it is possible: the solver finds a very good solution, not necessarily the best one. That is where solitaire stops being a pastime and turns into a proper puzzle.


★ THE DAILY DEAL

One deal a day, the same for everyone, wherever you are. You and your friends play exactly the same layout. It is the game's daily meet-up — and no ad ever shows up there, ever.


★ CHALLENGE SOMEONE

Every game carries a short code. Send it over and your opponent plays the deal you played. No account, no server: the code contains the deal.


★ TWO CARD GAMES, FIVE LEVELS

• Solitaire (Klondike), drawing one card or three
• Spider, with one, two or four suits
• Every deal is rated one to five stars by its real difficulty


★ COMFORTABLE, GENUINELY

• Four-colour deck, so you can tell suits apart without relying on red and black
• One-handed mode, which brings the table within thumb's reach
• Cards described to TalkBack, with nothing to switch on
• Four themes: midnight, light, paper cut, wood and brass
• Undo, hints, automatic resume of the game in progress
• Thirteen languages


★ WHAT THE APP DOES NOT DO

No account to create, no personal data to hand over. It does not touch your contacts, your location or your photos. Your games and settings stay on your phone.

Only two things leave it: anonymous usage statistics — which games get played, which get abandoned — that help make the game better, and what the ad network needs to pick an ad. A switch in the settings turns the analytics off completely, and the ad-free purchase takes care of the rest.


★ WHERE THE NAME COMES FROM

The talon is the pile you draw from — the French name for the stock. The one you touch every turn.

Solitaire, patience, klondike: three names for the same classic card game. Here you get the two best known, Klondike and Spider.


★ ONE THING WE WOULD RATHER TELL YOU

Par and the daily deal exist for Solitaire (Klondike) and for one-suit Spider. In two- and four-suit Spider, proving a deal is solvable goes beyond what a solver can manage in reasonable time: those modes deal random hands, with no par announced. We would rather write it here than hide it.