Daily Queens Game — Friday, July 17, 2026
Friday, July 17, 2026 · 10x10 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 #115
What follows is a complete solve of puzzle #115, worked the way a person works it rather than the way a computer does. It runs to 20 deductions — 10 queen placements and 10 elimination steps 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 proof by contradiction.
Techniques this board needs: region confined to one line, region shadow, pairing argument on rows, pairing argument on columns, proof by contradiction, last square in a region, last square in a row.
Show the full walkthrough (12 steps) — contains the solution
Step 1. Indigo cannot leave column 1 — every one of its open squares (2 open squares) sits there. That column belongs to indigo, so every square in it owned by another colour is dead: 10 squares in all.
Step 2. Blue is down to 3 candidates in rows 2–4, columns 2 and 3, and they overlap enough to cover 2 squares elsewhere. Cross those out without deciding anything about blue itself.
Step 3. Pale yellow cannot leave column 10 — every one of its open squares (2 open squares) sits there. That column belongs to pale yellow, so every square in it owned by another colour is dead: 10 squares in all.
Step 4. Wherever khaki ends up among its 5 squares, the same squares fall within reach of it — 1 square in total, impossible regardless of how the colour resolves.
The board after step 4 — 0 of 10 queens placed. Step 5. Sea green cannot leave row 10 — every one of its open squares (3 open squares) sits there. That row belongs to sea green, so every square on it owned by another colour is dead: 6 squares in all.
Step 6. Here is the pairing argument. The khaki and orange regions have no open squares outside rows 8 and 9 — 2 colours confined to 2 rows. Between them they must take one row each, in some order, so every other colour is shut out of all of them: 2 squares come off in one stroke.
Step 7. Mint, khaki, and sea green are now boxed into columns 7–9 and nothing else. That is 3 colours needing 3 columns, so they fill those columns between them — which locks every remaining colour out and removes 12 squares at once.
Step 8. Now a short proof by contradiction. Suppose the indigo queen went to row 2, column 1. Follow the forced moves that would create and the mint region is left with nowhere to put its queen — impossible. So that square is ruled out for good.
The board after step 8 — 0 of 10 queens placed. Step 9. Only row 1, column 1 is still open in indigo, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. That clears row 1, column 1, the rest of the indigo region and every square adjacent to it — diagonals included.
Step 10. All of the amber region's remaining squares (2 open squares) lie in column 4. Its queen therefore has to be somewhere in that column, which means no other colour may use it: 9 squares come off.
Step 11. Blue cannot leave column 2 — every one of its open squares (2 open squares) sits there. That column belongs to blue, so every square in it owned by another colour is dead: 5 squares in all.
Step 12. From here the board cascades. Keep alternating the region sweep and the line sweep and 9 queens fall out in order without any new idea being needed: slate has one square left, so its queen takes row 5, column 3; blue has one square left, so its queen takes row 3, column 2; amber has one square left, so its queen takes row 2, column 4; mint has one square left, so its queen takes row 4, column 9; row 8 is down to one square, putting a queen on row 8, column 7; orange has one square left, so its queen takes row 9, column 5; red has one square left, so its queen takes row 6, column 6; pale yellow has one square left, so its queen takes row 7, column 10; sea green has one square left, so its queen takes row 10, column 8. 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 10, column 8.
The board after step 12 — 10 of 10 queens placed.
That completes the board: 10 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 10x10 Queens puzzle #115
10x10 puzzle #115 is rated easy. Ten colored regions cover its 100 squares, and your job is to seat ten queens so that every row, column and color contains exactly one — with no queen touching another, including diagonally.
Puzzle #115 has been checked to admit exactly one arrangement of queens, and every step toward it is deducible from what is already on the board. There is no point at which you are expected to pick a square and hope. The only thing that differs between boards is how quickly the first certainty surfaces, and that depends entirely on the shapes the colors happen to take here.
How the colors divide this board
From smallest to largest, the regions on puzzle #115 are: indigo (2 squares), pale yellow (2 squares), sea green (5 squares), amber (6 squares), blue (6 squares), khaki (7 squares), slate (12 squares), mint (13 squares), orange (15 squares), red (32 squares). An even split would hand every color 10 squares, so the indigo region is running 8 squares under that average while the red region is the roomiest area on the grid with 32 squares.
One queen per color, regardless of acreage: that is what turns this uneven split into a solving order. Indigo is working with 2 squares while red has 32 to spare, a gap of 30. Attack the cramped end and the roomy regions tend to resolve themselves.
Look at arrangement as well as area. Indigo is the densest region on this grid at 100% of a 2×1 frame; blue is the loosest, occupying only 50% of its 4×3 frame. The loose one reaches into more rows and columns, which is exactly why it usually settles last.
Region by region
Each region's exact extent on this grid is listed below, starting with the most constrained. Knowing which lines a color can and cannot reach is most of the work on a easy board.
Indigo covers 2 squares, spanning 2 rows and 1 column (rows 1–2, columns 1–1). It sits wholly inside column 1, so its queen must be in that column.
Pale yellow occupies 2 squares within rows 6–7, columns 10–10. It sits wholly inside column 10, so its queen must be in that column.
Sea green: 5 squares across rows 9–10, columns 7–10.
Amber covers 6 squares, spanning 3 rows and 3 columns (rows 1–3, columns 3–5).
Blue occupies 6 squares within rows 1–4, columns 1–3.
Khaki: 7 squares across rows 7–9, columns 7–10.
Slate covers 12 squares, spanning 5 rows and 4 columns (rows 4–8, columns 1–4).
Mint occupies 13 squares within rows 1–6, columns 7–10.
Orange: 15 squares across rows 8–10, columns 1–6.
Red covers 32 squares, spanning 8 rows and 7 columns (rows 1–8, columns 3–9).
Where to start on this board
Open on the tightest color. Here that is indigo, confined to 2 squares between rows 1 and 2 and columns 1 and 1. Its queen has nowhere else to go, which means those 2 rows and 1 column carry more constraint than anywhere else on #115.
Because indigo stays inside column 1, its queen belongs to that column and no other region may use it. Cross out the rest of column 1 straight away. Any color that was relying on those squares now has a visibly smaller footprint, and that shrinkage is where your second deduction comes from.
Work outward to the other flat regions next. Pale yellow and sea green are no more than two rows tall, so their queens are 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 #115
A quick way to find the next move is to count how many different colors touch each line. On this board, row 10 is the narrowest, touched by only 2 colors. Column 6 is the tightest column, with 2 colors.
The fewer colors a line touches, the sooner it surrenders its queen. A row meeting just 2 colors has to be claimed by one of them, which pushes every remaining region into the other 9 rows. Row 2, meeting 5 colors, is the opposite case — the busiest line on #115 and the last one you should expect to crack.
Working through the middle game
The middle of #115 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 ten queens to seat and ten regions competing over 100 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 10x10 boards quickly and players who stall halfway.
The trap on a board like this is placing a queen that is merely plausible. Every placement should be traceable to an elimination you can point at. If you cannot name the rule that forced it, you are guessing — and on a single-solution grid a guess costs more to unwind than the deduction would have taken to find.
Why puzzle #115 is rated easy
The easy label comes out of four measurable things about #115: two of its regions are locked to one row or column, its smallest color spans 2 squares, its least crowded row meets 2 colors, and its largest and smallest regions differ by 30. Boards that score tight on those measures give up their first queen fast.
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.
When a board plays tougher than its label, look for a missed mark before you look for a clever deduction. Walk back over every queen you have placed and confirm the full row, the full column and all eight surrounding squares are crossed out. The diagonal neighbours are the ones players skip, and a single skipped diagonal will hide the next forced move indefinitely.
Techniques that work well at 10x10
At 10x10 a full re-scan after every move starts to get slow, so work locally instead. Once a queen goes down, check only the regions, rows and columns that placement actually touched — that is where new information appeared. Fall back to a complete sweep only when the local pass turns up nothing, and your solve times will drop noticeably.
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 10 on this board.
Here is a shape check that gives nothing away: when #115 is solved, 3 queens sit on the outer edge of the grid and 7 sit inside it, with 1 queen in a corner. A work-in-progress board that clusters its queens in one quadrant while leaving others bare is usually carrying a mistake.
Frequently asked questions
How hard is 10x10 Queens puzzle #115?
Puzzle #115 is rated easy. Its smallest color region holds 2 squares, its tightest row is touched by 2 colors, and two of its regions are confined to a single row or column, which gives you a forced move early.
Does 10x10 puzzle #115 have only one solution?
Yes. Every puzzle in the 10x10 collection, including #115, has been verified to have exactly one valid arrangement of ten queens, and it can always be reached by logic alone — no guessing or backtracking needed.
Where should I place my first queen on puzzle #115?
Start with the indigo region — the most constrained color on this board, with 2 squares spanning rows 1–2 and columns 1–1. 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.