Daily Queens Game — Monday, July 13, 2026
Monday, July 13, 2026 · 7x7 grid. A brand new puzzle, the same for everyone, resetting at midnight UTC.
About the daily Queens game
A new Queens puzzle every day at midnight UTC — free online, no sign-up. Replay unlimited past challenges from the daily archive or browse 1,800+ Queens puzzles.
How to play Queens
- The board is an N×N grid divided into N colored regions.
- Place exactly one queen (♛) in each row, each column, and each colored region.
- No two queens may touch each other — not horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.
- Tap once to mark a square with an X (where a queen can't go), tap again to place a queen, and once more to clear it.
- There is always exactly one valid solution. Use logic, never guessing, to find it.
Step-by-step solution for puzzle #239
What follows is a complete solve of puzzle #239, worked the way a person works it rather than the way a computer does. It runs to 8 deductions — 7 queen placements and 1 elimination step that narrow the board between them. Each step names the rule that forces it, so nothing below is a guess, and the hardest idea required is the region shadow.
Techniques this board needs: last square in a region, region shadow.
Show the full walkthrough (5 steps) — contains the solution
Step 1. The board opens by cascading. Each of these placements is forced the moment the one before it is marked, so the whole run is really a single sweep repeated: mint has one square left, so its queen takes row 4, column 4; red has one square left, so its queen takes row 6, column 2; blue has one square left, so its queen takes row 3, column 1; slate has one square left, so its queen takes row 5, column 7. After each one, clear that row, that column, the rest of the colour and the ring of neighbours before looking for the next. The last of them seats the queen on row 5, column 7.
Step 2. Indigo is down to 2 candidates in rows 1 and 2, columns 3 and 5, and they overlap enough to cover 3 squares elsewhere. Cross those out without deciding anything about indigo itself.
Step 3. The amber region is down to one open square, at row 2, column 6. Every colour holds exactly one queen, so that square is forced. Cross out the whole of row 2 and column 6, the remaining amber squares, and the ring of neighbours around row 2, column 6.
The board after step 3 — 5 of 7 queens placed. Step 4. Only row 1, column 3 is still open in indigo, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. Everything else in row 1, in column 3, in indigo and in the ring around that square is now dead.
Step 5. The pale yellow region is down to one open square, at row 7, column 5. Every colour holds exactly one queen, so that square is forced. Row 7 and column 5 are now spoken for, along with the squares touching that queen.
The board after step 5 — 7 of 7 queens placed.
That completes the board: 7 queens seated, one in every row, one in every column and one in every colour, with no two of them touching. Notice that nothing in the sequence above required a guess — each placement followed from an elimination already on the grid, which is what “single solution, solvable by logic” actually means in practice.
About 7x7 Queens puzzle #239
7x7 puzzle #239 is rated easy. Seven colored regions cover its 49 squares, and your job is to seat seven queens so that every row, column and color contains exactly one — with no queen touching another, including diagonally.
Like every board on this site, #239 has been verified to have exactly one valid solution, and that solution is reachable by deduction alone. You never have to guess and then unwind; every queen can be justified by something already visible on the grid. What changes from puzzle to puzzle is where the first certainty appears and how long the chain of reasoning runs before the next one — and that is entirely a product of how these particular colors are shaped.
How the colors divide this board
From smallest to largest, the regions on puzzle #239 are: mint (1 square), red (1 square), slate (4 squares), indigo (10 squares), amber (11 squares), blue (11 squares), pale yellow (11 squares). An even split would hand every color 7 squares, so the mint region is running 6 squares under that average while the pale yellow region is the roomiest area on the grid with 11 squares.
One queen per color, regardless of acreage: that is what turns this uneven split into a solving order. Mint is working with 1 square while pale yellow has 11 to spare, a gap of 10. Attack the cramped end and the roomy regions tend to resolve themselves.
Look at arrangement as well as area. Mint is the densest region on this grid at 100% of a 1×1 frame; pale yellow is the loosest, occupying only 46% of its 4×6 frame. The loose one reaches into more rows and columns, which is exactly why it usually settles last.
Region by region
The complete breakdown of each region on this board follows, ordered from tightest to roomiest. Skimming the spans first tells you where the board is crowded and where it has slack.
Mint occupies 1 square within rows 4–4, columns 4–4. It never leaves row 4, so its queen is locked to that row.
Red: 1 square across rows 6–6, columns 2–2. It never leaves row 6, so its queen is locked to that row.
Slate covers 4 squares, spanning 3 rows and 2 columns (rows 4–6, columns 6–7).
Indigo occupies 10 squares within rows 1–3, columns 1–5.
Amber: 11 squares across rows 1–4, columns 3–7.
Blue covers 11 squares, spanning 5 rows and 4 columns (rows 3–7, columns 1–4).
Pale yellow occupies 11 squares within rows 4–7, columns 2–7.
Where to start on this board
The most constrained color is where a solve should begin, and on #239 that is mint with 1 square. It reaches from row 4 to row 4 and from column 4 to column 4 — 1 row by 1 column. One queen has to live inside that footprint no matter what else happens, which makes those lines the busiest real estate on the board.
Because mint never leaves row 4, its queen must be in that row — and that instantly settles row 4 for everyone else. Sweep along it and X out every square that is not mint. Then look at which colors just lost ground: on a grid this size that one observation usually forces a second region within a move or two.
Work outward to the other flat regions next. Red is no more than two rows tall, so its queen is confined to a narrow band. When two flat regions overlap the same pair of rows, those rows are spoken for and every other color is locked out of both — the single most productive pattern in the game, and it is live on this board.
The tightest lines on puzzle #239
A quick way to find the next move is to count how many different colors touch each line. On this board, rows 1, 2 and 7 are the narrowest, touched by only 2 colors. Column 1 is the tightest column, with 2 colors.
Those lines matter because a row touched by few colors gives its queen away sooner. If a row meets only 2 colors, then one of those regions has to own it, and every other region is competing for the remaining 6 rows. By contrast row 4 meets 5 colors — the most crowded line here, and the one least likely to resolve early. Spend your attention accordingly.
Working through the middle game
The middle of #239 is where careless play costs time. Every queen you place kills a row, a column and the eight surrounding squares; if you do not mark all of that immediately, you will later "discover" a move that was available several turns ago. Mark first, then look.
With seven queens to seat and seven regions competing over 49 squares, keep two questions in rotation. Does any region now have exactly one open square left? That queen is forced. Does any row or column now have exactly one open square left? That queen is forced too. Alternating between the region view and the row-and-column view is what keeps a solve moving, and it is the clearest difference between players who finish 7x7 boards quickly and players who stall halfway.
Say the reason out loud: "this region has one square left", "this column has one square left". If no such sentence is available, the eliminating is not finished. One more pass of X marks is almost always quicker than committing to a placement you cannot defend.
Why puzzle #239 is rated easy
Ratings track how generous the opening is. On #239 you get four regions pinned to a single row or column, a smallest color of 1 square, a tightest row crossed by 2 colors, and a 10-square gap between the largest and smallest regions. Those four numbers largely explain the easy label.
Nothing about the rating involves computation or chance. Each grid has a single solution reachable by pure logic; the rating simply measures how far ahead you have to reason. Easy boards resolve a queen every step or two, while hard ones can ask you to carry three unfinished lines of thought before any of them pays off.
If #239 feels harder than its rating suggests, the usual culprit is incomplete marking rather than a difficult deduction. Check that every queen already on the grid has its full cross of eliminations recorded — including the diagonal neighbours, which are by far the easiest to miss. More stalled solves come from one forgotten diagonal X than from any genuinely deep chain of logic.
Techniques that work well at 7x7
At 7x7 the whole grid stays within a single glance, which makes systematic scanning practical. Read the rows in order and count the colors in each — a row touched by two colors is far more constrained than one touched by five, and that is usually where the next forced move hides. The board is small enough that re-scanning from the top after each placement costs almost nothing.
Whatever the grid size, the pairing rule is the technique to internalise. When a pair of regions is boxed into the same pair of rows, they split those rows between them and nobody else may enter — and the same holds for columns, or for any n regions confined to n lines. Look for an instance of it around row 1 on this board.
As a sanity check rather than a spoiler: the finished solution to #239 puts 4 queens on the outer border and 3 queens in the interior, with none in a corner. If your part-finished grid has queens bunched into one area while whole stretches sit empty, something probably went wrong a few moves back.
Frequently asked questions
How hard is 7x7 Queens puzzle #239?
Puzzle #239 is rated easy. Its smallest color region holds 1 square, its tightest row is touched by 2 colors, and four of its regions are confined to a single row or column, which gives you a forced move early.
Does 7x7 puzzle #239 have only one solution?
Yes. Every puzzle in the 7x7 collection, including #239, has been verified to have exactly one valid arrangement of seven queens, and it can always be reached by logic alone — no guessing or backtracking needed.
Where should I place my first queen on puzzle #239?
Start with the mint region — the most constrained color on this board, with 1 square spanning rows 4–4 and columns 4–4. Narrowing the smallest region first removes the most squares elsewhere on the grid.
What makes the daily Queens game special
The daily Queens game challenge is one carefully chosen puzzle that is the same for every player around the world. A new board goes live every day at midnight UTC and stays as the day's official puzzle until the next reset. Because everyone is solving the identical grid, the daily becomes a shared experience: you can compare how you approached it with friends, talk through the tricky deduction in the middle, or simply enjoy the quiet satisfaction of knowing you cracked the same board as solvers everywhere else.
Like every puzzle on the site, the daily Queens game online is completely free, needs no sign-up and runs instantly in your browser so you can play Queens online in seconds. It is designed to be a perfect bite-sized brain exercise — long enough to feel earned, short enough to fit into a coffee break. Solving it keeps your daily streak alive, and the streak is a gentle nudge to come back tomorrow and keep the logical part of your mind warmed up.
How today's puzzle is chosen
Each day's board is drawn from our larger library of verified puzzles, so the daily inherits the same cast-iron guarantee as the rest of the site: it has exactly one solution and that solution is always reachable by logic alone, never by guessing. The grid size and the specific puzzle rotate from day to day, which keeps the routine varied — some days you will face a brisk smaller board, other days a meatier grid that rewards a slower, more methodical solve.
Because the selection is deterministic and tied to the date, the puzzle you see today is exactly the puzzle every other player sees today, and it is exactly the puzzle that will sit at this date forever in the archive. There is no randomness between players and no way to refresh into an easier board — the challenge is fixed, fair and shared, which is precisely what makes comparing solves with other people meaningful.
Replay the full daily archive
Missing a day is never a problem here. Every past daily challenge is preserved in the archive, so you can step back to any previous date and play that day's board exactly as it appeared. This is something the original LinkedIn-style daily does not let you do, and it turns the daily from a one-shot novelty into a deep, replayable collection you can binge whenever you like.
The archive is also a great way to practice. If today's grid size suits you, browse backward to find more boards of the same shape, or work through the history in order to feel how the puzzles vary over time. You can move directly between consecutive days using the previous and next links, jump to any date from the archive list, or branch out into the full puzzle library whenever you want even more to solve.
A simple daily solving routine
A reliable routine makes the daily quick and stress-free. Begin by reading the colors: find the smallest or most awkwardly shaped region, because a cramped region usually forces its queen into one of very few squares. Then sweep the rows and columns for any line that already has only a single open cell, since a queen must go there. Place those forced queens first and let them do the heavy lifting.
After every placement, immediately mark X's on the squares that queen rules out — the rest of its row, column and region, plus every neighboring square it touches. These marks keep the board honest and constantly expose the next forced move. When easy moves run out, hunt for pairs of regions confined to the same rows or columns; identifying those locked lines is what breaks open the harder daily boards. Work in calm passes, trust the logic, and the final queen will click into place.
More ways to keep playing
If one puzzle a day is not enough, the Queens game online keeps you covered. Dive into the archive to replay history, or open the full library of more than 1,800 puzzles across six grid sizes, from quick 7x7 boards to demanding 12x12 grids. Every one of them follows the same friendly promise: one queen per row, one per column, one per color region, none of them touching, and a single solution you can always reach by reasoning rather than luck.
However you choose to play, the daily challenge is a great anchor for the habit. Solve it each day to protect your streak, use the archive to catch up on anything you missed, and lean on the wider library whenever you want to push your skills further. It is a free, friendly, guess-free logic puzzle that is always ready when you want to think.