Daily Queens Game — Thursday, October 1, 2026
Thursday, October 1, 2026 · 9x9 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 #174
What follows is a complete solve of puzzle #174, worked the way a person works it rather than the way a computer does. It runs to 14 deductions — 9 queen placements and 5 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 pairing argument on columns.
Techniques this board needs: last square in a region, region shadow, pairing argument on rows, pairing argument on columns, region confined to one line.
Show the full walkthrough (10 steps) — contains the solution
Step 1. Only row 3, column 1 is still open in blue, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. That clears row 3, column 1, the rest of the blue region and every square adjacent to it — diagonals included.
Step 2. The mint region is down to one open square, at row 4, column 8. Every colour holds exactly one queen, so that square is forced. Cross out the whole of row 4 and column 8, the remaining mint squares, and the ring of neighbours around row 4, column 8.
Step 3. Only row 9, column 2 is still open in orange, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. Everything else in row 9, in column 2, in orange and in the ring around that square is now dead.
The board after step 3 — 3 of 9 queens placed. Step 4. Wherever slate ends up among its 3 squares, the same squares fall within reach of it — 2 squares in total, impossible regardless of how the colour resolves.
Step 5. Red is down to 4 candidates in rows 5–7, columns 3 and 4, and they overlap enough to cover 1 square elsewhere. Cross those out without deciding anything about red itself.
Step 6. Here is the pairing argument. The slate, red, pale yellow, and khaki regions have no open squares outside rows 5–8 — 4 colours confined to 4 rows. Between them they must take one row each, in some order, so every other colour is shut out of all of them: 1 square come off in one stroke.
Step 7. Indigo and pale yellow are now boxed into columns 7 and 9 and nothing else. That is 2 colours needing 2 columns, so they fill those columns between them — which locks every remaining colour out and removes 3 squares at once.
The board after step 7 — 3 of 9 queens placed. Step 8. The slate region is down to one open square, at row 5, column 6. Every colour holds exactly one queen, so that square is forced. Row 5 and column 6 are now spoken for, along with the squares touching that queen.
Step 9. Red cannot leave column 4 — every one of its open squares (2 open squares) sits there. That column belongs to red, so every square in it owned by another colour is dead: 5 squares in all.
Step 10. From here the board cascades. Keep alternating the region sweep and the line sweep and 5 queens fall out in order without any new idea being needed: khaki has one square left, so its queen takes row 8, column 5; red has one square left, so its queen takes row 6, column 4; pale yellow has one square left, so its queen takes row 7, column 9; indigo has one square left, so its queen takes row 1, column 7; amber has one square left, so its queen takes row 2, column 3. 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 2, column 3.
The board after step 10 — 9 of 9 queens placed.
That completes the board: 9 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 9x9 Queens puzzle #174
Board #174 of the 9x9 bank carries a medium rating. Its 81 squares are shared between nine colored regions, and the solution places nine queens: one per row, one per column, one per region, none of them side by side or corner to corner.
As with every puzzle in this collection, #174 has a single verified solution and needs no guesswork. Each queen follows from something already visible. What the board controls is tempo — how soon the first forced move shows up and how far apart the rest are spaced — and that is a direct consequence of how these colors are cut.
How the colors divide this board
From smallest to largest, the regions on puzzle #174 are: blue (1 square), mint (2 squares), orange (3 squares), indigo (7 squares), slate (7 squares), red (12 squares), pale yellow (12 squares), khaki (15 squares), amber (22 squares). An even split would hand every color 9 squares, so the blue region is running 8 squares under that average while the amber region is the roomiest area on the grid with 22 squares.
That imbalance is the first thing to read, because every region takes exactly one queen regardless of how much space it owns. Blue has only 1 place to put its queen; amber has 22. The spread between them on this board is 21 squares, and the wider that spread runs, the more it pays to solve from the small end inward.
A region's outline can constrain it more than its size does. Here blue is the most solid, filling 100% of its 1×1 box, and indigo the most diffuse at 58% of its 4×3 box. Solid blocks give clean eliminations; diffuse ones spread across the board and stay open longer.
Region by region
Below is every color on #174 with its exact reach, smallest region first. It is worth a slow read: the spans reveal which rows and columns several regions are fighting over.
Blue: 1 square across rows 3–3, columns 1–1. It never leaves row 3, so its queen is locked to that row.
Mint covers 2 squares, spanning 2 rows and 1 column (rows 3–4, columns 8–8). It sits wholly inside column 8, so its queen must be in that column.
Orange occupies 3 squares within rows 8–9, columns 1–2.
Indigo: 7 squares across rows 1–4, columns 7–9.
Slate covers 7 squares, spanning 5 rows and 2 columns (rows 3–7, columns 6–7).
Red occupies 12 squares within rows 4–7, columns 1–4.
Pale yellow: 12 squares across rows 5–9, columns 7–9.
Khaki covers 15 squares, spanning 4 rows and 5 columns (rows 6–9, columns 2–6).
Amber occupies 22 squares within rows 1–5, columns 1–7.
Where to start on this board
Open on the tightest color. Here that is blue, confined to 1 square between rows 3 and 3 and columns 1 and 1. Its queen has nowhere else to go, which means those 1 row and 1 column carry more constraint than anywhere else on #174.
Because blue never leaves row 3, its queen must be in that row — and that instantly settles row 3 for everyone else. Sweep along it and X out every square that is not blue. 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. Mint and orange 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 #174
A quick way to find the next move is to count how many different colors touch each line. On this board, rows 1 and 2 are the narrowest, touched by only 2 colors. Columns 5 and 9 are the tightest columns, 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 8 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
Once two or three queens are down, the board changes character. Each queen removes an entire row, an entire column and the ring of up to eight squares around it, so the grid shrinks faster than most people expect. The habit that pays here is marking rather than remembering: after every placement, cross out the full row, the full column and all eight neighbours before hunting for the next move.
Keep alternating between two views of the board. In the region view you ask which of the nine colors is down to one open square. In the line view you ask the same of each row and column. Both produce forced queens, and each placement refreshes the other view, so cycling between them deliberately is how a 9x9 board unwinds.
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 #174 is rated medium
What earns a board its rating is the shape of its opening. Here that opening offers three single-line regions, a 1-square smallest color, a tightest row touched by 2 colors, and a region-size spread of 21. Lopsided grids with flat regions fall quickly; balanced ones like this take more patience.
Rating is a measure of chain length, not of chance. With one guaranteed solution and no guessing required, the only thing that changes across the collection is how many eliminations you must link together before a queen is provably forced.
A board that feels above its rating is nearly always a board with a missing X. Audit every queen on the grid: full row cleared, full column cleared, all eight touching squares cleared. Diagonals are the common omission, and missing one is far more often the cause of a stall than any genuine difficulty in the puzzle.
Techniques that work well at 9x9
At 9x9 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.
One pattern is worth learning at every size, and it is available here. When two regions can only fit inside the same two rows, they must take one row each — which locks every other region out of both. The same argument works for columns, and for any matching count: three regions sharing three rows, four sharing four. Spotting these pairings turns a slow grind into a quick cascade, and on #174 the place to look for one is around row 1.
As a sanity check rather than a spoiler: the finished solution to #174 puts 4 queens on the outer border and 5 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 9x9 Queens puzzle #174?
Puzzle #174 is rated medium. Its smallest color region holds 1 square, its tightest row is touched by 2 colors, and three of its regions are confined to a single row or column, which gives you a forced move early.
Does 9x9 puzzle #174 have only one solution?
Yes. Every puzzle in the 9x9 collection, including #174, has been verified to have exactly one valid arrangement of nine queens, and it can always be reached by logic alone — no guessing or backtracking needed.
Where should I place my first queen on puzzle #174?
Start with the blue region — the most constrained color on this board, with 1 square spanning rows 3–3 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.