Making a puzzle…
- One queen in each colour
- One in each row and column
- Queens never touch
How to play Queen Puzzle
Queen Puzzle is a logic puzzle on a square board split into coloured regions. Your goal is to place one queen in every row, every column and every region, so that no two queens touch.
The rules
- Each row has exactly one queen.
- Each column has exactly one queen.
- Each coloured region has exactly one queen.
- Two queens never touch, not even diagonally.
An 8×8 board has eight rows, eight columns, eight regions and eight queens. Every puzzle has exactly one solution, and you can always find the next step by reasoning.
Marking the board
Tap a cell to mark it with a cross, meaning “no queen here”, and tap it again to clear the cross. Double-tap a cell to place a queen, and double-tap it again to take the queen away. You can also hold and drag to cross out several cells in a row.
If you turn on Auto ×, the cells a queen rules out (its row, its column, its region and the eight cells around it) are crossed out for you. It is off at first, so you mark everything yourself.
Difficulty
Difficulty comes from the kind of thinking a puzzle needs, and the board grows with it:
- Easy (5×5): most queens follow from a region or line with one place left.
- Medium (6×6): you also need to see when a region sits inside one row or column.
- Hard (8×8): at least one step needs a group: two regions that only fit in the same two rows or columns.
- Expert (10×10): at least one step needs you to follow a queen a few moves ahead and see that it leads to a dead end.
Tips
- Start with the small regions. A region of one or two cells leaves very few places for its queen.
- Look for a region inside one row or column. If every open cell of a region lies in the same row, that row’s queen belongs to the region, so the rest of the row can be crossed out.
- Check what a queen would block. If a queen on a cell would cross out every open cell of some region, that cell cannot hold a queen.
- Count groups. If two regions only have open cells in the same two rows, those two rows are taken by them, and every other cell in those rows is empty.
Frequently asked questions
Is there always exactly one solution?
Yes. Before a puzzle reaches you, our solver checks that it has one solution and that it can be solved by logic alone.
How is this different from other queens games?
The rules are the classic queens region puzzle, also known as Star Battle with one star. LinkedIn’s daily game Queens uses similar rules; Queen Puzzle is independent and not affiliated with LinkedIn. Here you can play as many puzzles as you like, from Easy 5×5 to Expert 10×10.
What does Hint do?
Hint shows the next step that logic allows, marks the cells it is about and says which rule makes it work. If one of your marks is wrong, it points that out first. You have three hints per puzzle.
Is my game saved?
Yes, in your browser on this device. Close the page and come back later: your board and time are where you left them. There are no accounts.