LinkedIn Queens Solver — Enter Your Board, Get the Solution

What Is LinkedIn Queens?

Queens is LinkedIn’s daily logic puzzle. You get an n×n grid divided into n color regions, and you must place exactly one queen (crown) so that every row, every column, and every color regioncontains exactly one queen — and no two queens touch, even diagonally. That last rule is the one that trips people up: unlike a chess queen, a Queens crown only “attacks” the eight cells around it, not whole diagonals. Every daily board has exactly one solution reachable by pure logic.

How to Use the Queens Solver

1. Pick the grid size — 6×6 through 11×11, matching your puzzle.
2. Paint the regions — select a color, then click or drag across the grid to copy each colored region from your board. The swatch numbers show each region’s cell count so you can double-check.
3. Solve or learn — press Solve for the full answer, or Hint mode to reveal one logical deduction at a time with its cells highlighted.

How the Solver Works

The instant solver is a backtracking search with constraint propagation. Because every row holds exactly one queen, the solver works row by row, always choosing the row with the fewest remaining legal cells (the “most constrained first” heuristic). Placing a queen removes its column, its region, and the adjacent cells of neighboring rows from play; any branch that leaves some row or region with zero legal cells is abandoned immediately. Even an 11×11 board resolves in milliseconds.

Hint mode uses a separate, human-style engine that only applies deductions a person would make: single-cell regions, regions squeezed into one row or column (which claim that whole line), and rows, columns, or regions reduced to a single remaining cell. Each step reports what it found and highlights the cells involved.

Core Solving Techniques

• Single-cell regions first. A region with one cell must hold its queen — place it and cross off its row, column, and surrounding cells.
• Line-confined regions. If all of a region’s remaining cells sit in one row (or column), that region’s queen owns the line — eliminate every other cell in it.
• Last cell standing. When eliminations leave a row, column, or region with a single open cell, the queen goes there.
• Region counting. If k regions fit entirely inside k rows, those rows belong to those regions — every other cell in them is dead.
• Try the crowded rows early. Rows crossed by many small regions resolve fastest and unlock the rest of the board.

Worked Example

Load the built-in Example board (7×7) and open Hint mode. The first deduction is immediate: one region is a single cell, so its queen is forced. That placement wipes out its whole row and column plus the touching diagonal cells, and suddenly three more regions are each squeezed down to a single surviving cell — four crowns from pure “last cell standing” logic. On this board the simple techniques then run out, which is realistic too: the hardest daily puzzles need a final layer of what-if elimination (“if the queen went here, some region would die”). Press Solve to finish, and study which cells the remaining crowns landed on — that place-eliminate-place cascade is exactly how fast human solvers clear the daily puzzle without guessing.

Love Queens? Play Unlimited Star Battle

Queens is a single-star Star Battle — same rows-columns-regions rule, same no-touching rule. If one puzzle a day isn’t enough, play unlimited free Star Battle puzzles here on PuzzlePage, from easy single-star boards up to two-star grids that make the daily Queens feel gentle.

Frequently Asked Questions