Queens — one crown per color. Three a day, none expire.
Place a queen in every row, every column, and every color region — without letting any two touch.
The logic puzzle popularized by LinkedIn, playable free right here: easy, medium, and hard boards daily,
no app and no account needed.
That's the whole game. Tap a square once to mark it with an ✕ (no queen here), tap again to place a queen,
tap a third time to clear it. Turn on auto-X in the settings and the board
will cross off every square your queens rule out automatically.
Solving without guessing
Every puzzle we publish has a single solution reachable by pure logic. Start with the smallest color regions:
a region squeezed into one row or column claims that line for itself, so you can cross the rest of it off.
Each elimination narrows the next region until every queen is forced. If you're a
Star Battle player, Queens will feel familiar —
it's the one-star variant with colors.
Solving it
How to solve Queens without guessing
Three deductions carry every Queens board we publish, from the easy morning grid to the hard one. Learn them in this order and
you will never need to guess — every board here has exactly one solution, and our solver confirms it can be reached by logic alone
before the puzzle goes live.
1. One queen clears a cross and a ring
Queens is stricter than Star Battle in one way that works in your favor: a row or column holds just one queen. So the moment
you place her, her whole row and her whole column are finished, and the four diagonal corners around her are out too because no two
queens may touch. One placement, twelve eliminations on a small board — and more on a bigger one. Always clear the cross before you
look for the next queen.
♛
1 Place a queen.
→
×
×
×
×
×
×
♛
×
×
×
×
×
×
2 Her row and column are done — one queen each — and the four diagonal corners touch her. One queen, twelve eliminations.
2. A small region claims its line
Every color region holds exactly one queen. When a region's cells all sit in a single row — or a single column — that line's only queen
must be inside the region, so every other cell in the line is crossed off before you have placed anything. Small regions are where a
Queens board breaks open; look for the tiniest patch of color first.
1 This region has just two cells, both in the same row. Its queen is one of them — so that row's only queen is already spoken for.
→
×
×
×
2 Every other cell in the row is out. Small regions are where a Queens board breaks open.
3. Two regions, two rows
The same idea, one size up. If two regions live entirely inside the same two rows, those regions need two queens and two rows can hold
only two — so the rows' queens belong to those regions, and every other cell in the two rows is out. Then look for three regions in three
rows, and so on. This is the move that cracks the hard board, and it works just as well on columns.
1 These two regions sit entirely inside the top two rows. Each needs a queen, and two rows can hold only two.
→
×
×
×
2 So the top two rows' queens belong to those two regions — every other cell up there is X'd, before a single queen is placed.
When the board goes quiet, run those three in order: clear every placed queen's cross, check the smallest regions for a claimed line,
then look for two or three regions sharing two or three lines. If it is still quiet, yesterday's
step-by-step solution names each deduction
on a real board — find the step where it diverges from yours. Coming from Star Battle? The
Queens vs Star Battle guide maps every technique
across.
Queens is a logic puzzle played on a grid of colored regions. You place queens so that every row, every column, and every color region contains exactly one queen — and no two queens ever touch, not even diagonally. It is the game popularized by LinkedIn.
Where can I play Queens online for free?
Right here. TryHard Puzzles publishes three free Queens puzzles every day — easy, medium, and hard — playable in the browser with no app, no paywall, and no account.
How do you solve a Queens puzzle without guessing?
Every puzzle we publish is solvable by pure logic. Look for regions confined to a single row or column, cross off squares no queen can occupy, and each queen will be forced into place step by step.
Is this the LinkedIn Queens game?
We are not affiliated with LinkedIn. Our Queens puzzles follow the same one-queen-per-row-column-and-color rules that LinkedIn made popular, but every board here is our own original creation — and you get three a day instead of one.
TryHard Puzzles is an independent puzzle site and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by LinkedIn.
Every Queens puzzle here is an original board of our own making.