How to play Queens
Queens is a logic puzzle on a square grid that’s split into colored regions. An 5×5 board has5 regions and needs 5 queens. There’s no luck involved: every board has exactly one solution, and you can always work it out without guessing.
The rules
- One queen in every row.
- One queen in every column.
- One queen in every colored region.
- Queens can’t touch, not even corner to corner.
Unlike chess queens, these don’t attack along long diagonals. The diagonal rule only covers the eight cells right around a queen.
Controls
| Action | Touch | Mouse / keyboard |
|---|---|---|
| Mark ✕ (no queen here) | Tap an empty cell, or long-press | Click an empty cell, right-click, or press X |
| Place a queen | Tap an ✕ | Click an ✕, or press Q |
| Clear a cell | Tap a queen | Click a queen, or Backspace |
| Mark many cells | Drag across them | Click and drag |
| Move around | – | Arrow keys |
| Undo | Undo button | Ctrl/⌘ + Z |
Playing with a keyboard only
Everything works without a mouse:
- Tab moves between the controls: size, the board, Undo, Reset, Hint, New and the settings. The board is a single Tab stop.
- On the board, arrow keys move between cells. Home and End jump to the ends of the row.
- Space or Enter cycles the focused cell: empty → ✕ → queen → empty, the same as a tap.
- Shortcuts: X toggles an ✕, Q toggles a queen, Backspace or Delete clears, Ctrl/⌘ + Z undoes.
- If the game pauses, focus moves to Resume, and resuming puts you back on the same cell.
- The results window keeps focus inside it until you close it with Esc or Close. On the solver page, ← and → step through the solution.
With Auto-mark excluded cells on (the default), placing a queen shows faded ✕s on every cell it rules out: its row, column, region and the eight cells around it. They disappear if you remove the queen. Your own ✕s are never touched. Turn it off under the board if you’d rather mark everything yourself.
There are three kinds of ✕. The ✕s you’ve placed since your last queen are bold, so your newest deductions stand out. Placing a queen settles them into regular ✕s. Auto-marked ✕s are always the smallest and faintest.
If two queens break a rule, the row, column or region they share is striped red and the queens turn red. Marks are just notes for you. The game never checks them, but good marking is how you solve the big boards.
Your first solve, step by step
- Find the smallest region. A region with one cell is a free queen. A region with two or three cells gives you very few options.
- Place a queen, then mark around it. The rest of its row, its column, its region and the eight cells around it can’t hold a queen. Auto-mark shows these as faded ✕s for you.
- Look for a row, column or region with one open cell. That cell must be a queen. Place it and mark around it again.
- When that dries up, look for squeezed regions. If a region’s open cells all sit in one row, that row’s queen belongs to that region. Mark ✕ on the rest of the row. The techniques guide covers this and more.
Modes
- Daily: one board a day, the same for everyone. Solve it on the day to build a streak.
- Unlimited: a new board whenever you want, in any size from 5×5 to 12×12.
- Archive: every past daily.
- Catalog: numbered puzzles with fixed links, good for sharing.
Stuck? The Hint button first checks for mistakes (that’s free). Then it teaches you a named technique, such as Region Squeeze. It outlines the row, column or region that causes the deduction, explains why in plain words, marks the ✕s it proves, and links to the techniques guide. It only places a queen when no ✕ can be deduced. You get three hints per puzzle. Best times only count puzzles solved without hints. Reset starts the puzzle over, including the timer, moves and hints.