How to Play Queens

Queens is a logic puzzle about placing crowns on a coloured grid. Every row, every column and every colour region takes exactly one crown — no more, no fewer — and the board is solved the moment all of them are down legally.

Tap a square once to mark it with an ×, twice to place a crown, and a third time to clear it. Drag across a run of squares to sweep × over all of them. Two rules decide whether a crown holds:

• One per line, one per colour. A second crown in the same row, column or colour region is a clash, and both are flagged.
• Crowns never touch. Two crowns may not sit next to each other, not even corner to corner.

A crown that breaks a rule is not thrown away: it stays on the board in red, with the reason spelled out underneath — Row 4 holds 2 crowns — it takes 1. Undo steps back one move, Reset clears the board, and Hint is there when a board stops making sense.

Tips for Harder Boards

• Start with the small regions. A colour covering one or two squares has almost no freedom, and the crown it forces rules out a whole row and column for everything else.
• Mark what you rule out. The × is the real tool here. Sweep a row or column the moment a crown lands, and the board narrows itself.
• Count the leftovers. If a colour region has been reduced to squares that all sit in rows already taken, something earlier is wrong — even if every crown you have placed looks legal on its own.
• Watch the corners of a region. A long thin region crossing several rows often only fits one way once its neighbours are settled.
• Keep the run alive. Clearing a stage without a hint builds your run. One hint resets it to zero, so it is worth staring a little longer before asking.

Why Play Queens Here?

Twenty-four stages that grow with you: the boards start at 8×8 and climb through 9×9 to a 10×10 that will take some sitting with. Every board is checked before you see it — each one has exactly one solution, so a puzzle can always be reasoned out and never needs a guess.

It runs entirely in your browser with nothing to download and no account to make. Your cleared stages, best times, run and badges are kept in your own browser and nothing is collected. Play with a mouse, a finger or the keyboard — the arrow keys move between squares and space cycles one.

In the mood for a different kind of grid? Try Patches, where you carve the board into blocks instead of dotting it with crowns, or take on Magic Sudoku (Hard) if you would rather work with numbers.