10x10 Queens Puzzle #229
Difficulty: hard. Place 10 queens on this 10x10 board so that no two share a row, column or color region and none touch — including diagonally. This puzzle has exactly one solution, and it has been verified solvable by deduction alone: the complete 18-step reasoning is written out below.
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Step-by-step solution for puzzle #229
What follows is a complete solve of puzzle #229, worked the way a person works it rather than the way a computer does. It runs to 18 deductions — 10 queen placements and 8 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: last square in a region, region shadow, line confined to one region, proof by contradiction, region confined to one line, last square in a row.
Show the full walkthrough (14 steps) — contains the solution
Step 1. Only row 1, column 5 is still open in indigo, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. That clears row 1, column 5, the rest of the indigo region and every square adjacent to it — diagonals included.
Step 2. The sea green region is down to one open square, at row 10, column 2. Every colour holds exactly one queen, so that square is forced. Cross out the whole of row 10 and column 2, the remaining sea green squares, and the ring of neighbours around row 10, column 2.
Step 3. Only row 9, column 4 is still open in orange, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. Everything else in row 9, in column 4, in orange and in the ring around that square is now dead.
Step 4. Wherever amber ends up among its 2 squares, the same squares fall within reach of it — 1 square in total, impossible regardless of how the colour resolves.
Step 5. Blue is down to 5 candidates in rows 2–4, columns 7–9, and they overlap enough to cover 1 square elsewhere. Cross those out without deciding anything about blue itself.
The board after step 5 — 3 of 10 queens placed. Step 6. The mint region has 4 squares left, spread across rows 2–4, columns 9 and 10. You do not need to know which of them takes the queen: every one of those options attacks the same 1 square, so they can be crossed out now.
Step 7. Column 1 has only red squares left (7 open squares). The column needs a queen and only red can provide one, which pins that colour to this column and kills its squares elsewhere: 3 squares.
Step 8. Now a short proof by contradiction. Suppose the amber queen went to row 5, column 6. Follow the forced moves that would create and the khaki region is left with nowhere to put its queen — impossible. So that square is ruled out for good.
Step 9. Only row 2, column 3 is still open in amber, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. That clears row 2, column 3, the rest of the amber region and every square adjacent to it — diagonals included.
The board after step 9 — 4 of 10 queens placed. Step 10. All of the blue region's remaining squares (2 open squares) lie in column 8. Its queen therefore has to be somewhere in that column, which means no other colour may use it: 6 squares come off.
Step 11. Mint cannot leave column 10 — every one of its open squares (2 open squares) sits there. That column belongs to mint, so every square in it owned by another colour is dead: 4 squares in all.
Step 12. The khaki region is down to one open square, at row 8, column 9. Every colour holds exactly one queen, so that square is forced. Row 8 and column 9 are now spoken for, along with the squares touching that queen.
Step 13. Pale yellow cannot leave row 7 — every one of its open squares (2 open squares) sits there. That row belongs to pale yellow, so every square on it owned by another colour is dead: 3 squares in all.
Step 14. 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: row 6 is down to one square, putting a queen on row 6, column 1; row 5 is down to one square, putting a queen on row 5, column 7; blue has one square left, so its queen takes row 3, column 8; mint has one square left, so its queen takes row 4, column 10; pale yellow has one square left, so its queen takes row 7, column 6. 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 7, column 6.
The board after step 14 — 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 #229
Puzzle #229 is one of the hard-rated boards in the 10x10 set. Ten colors divide its 100 squares, and you win by placing ten queens so that each row, each column and each color holds exactly one, with no two queens adjacent in any direction.
There is exactly one way to finish #229, and it has been verified. More importantly, you can reach it without ever gambling: at every stage some square is provably right or provably wrong. Boards differ only in how deep you must dig before that proof appears, and the geometry of these ten regions is what sets the depth.
How the colors divide this board
From smallest to largest, the regions on puzzle #229 are: indigo (1 square), sea green (1 square), mint (5 squares), orange (6 squares), blue (10 squares), slate (12 squares), khaki (14 squares), amber (15 squares), pale yellow (16 squares), red (20 squares). An even split would hand every color 10 squares, so the indigo region is running 9 squares under that average while the red region is the roomiest area on the grid with 20 squares.
Why does the split matter? Because a region's square count has no bearing on how many queens it gets — the answer is always one. So indigo, with 1 square, is under far more pressure than red with 20. A 19-square gap like this one rewards players who start where the choices are fewest.
A region's outline can constrain it more than its size does. Here indigo is the most solid, filling 100% of its 1×1 box, and pale yellow the most diffuse at 44% of its 6×6 box. Solid blocks give clean eliminations; diffuse ones spread across the board and stay open longer.
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 hard board.
Indigo covers 1 square, spanning 1 row and 1 column (rows 1–1, columns 5–5). It never leaves row 1, so its queen is locked to that row.
Sea green occupies 1 square within rows 10–10, columns 2–2. It never leaves row 10, so its queen is locked to that row.
Mint: 5 squares across rows 1–4, columns 9–10.
Orange covers 6 squares, spanning 2 rows and 3 columns (rows 9–10, columns 3–5).
Blue occupies 10 squares within rows 1–4, columns 6–9.
Slate: 12 squares across rows 3–7, columns 6–9.
Khaki covers 14 squares, spanning 6 rows and 3 columns (rows 5–10, columns 8–10).
Amber occupies 15 squares within rows 1–5, columns 1–6.
Pale yellow: 16 squares across rows 5–10, columns 2–7.
Red covers 20 squares, spanning 9 rows and 4 columns (rows 2–10, columns 1–4).
Where to start on this board
Begin where the choices are fewest. On this board that means indigo, which owns just 1 square inside a 1×1 window running from row 1 to row 1 and column 5 to column 5. A queen is guaranteed somewhere in there, so every line that window crosses is under pressure from the very first move.
Because indigo never leaves row 1, its queen must be in that row — and that instantly settles row 1 for everyone else. Sweep along it and X out every square that is not indigo. 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. Sea green 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 #229
A quick way to find the next move is to count how many different colors touch each line. On this board, row 8 is the narrowest, touched by only 3 colors. Columns 1 and 10 are the tightest columns, with 2 colors.
A line with few colors is a line close to resolving. Where only 3 colors appear, one of them owns the row outright and the others must fit into the remaining 9 rows. Row 10 is the crowded extreme at 5 colors — worth revisiting later, not now.
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.
The whole middle game reduces to two sweeps. Sweep the ten colors looking for one with a single square left; sweep the ten rows and ten columns looking for the same. Each sweep feeds the next, and switching between them deliberately — rather than drifting — is what separates a fast 10x10 solve from a stalled one.
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 #229 is rated hard
The hard label comes out of four measurable things about #229: four of its regions are locked to one row or column, its smallest color spans 1 square, its least crowded row meets 3 colors, and its largest and smallest regions differ by 19. Boards that score tight on those measures give up their first queen fast.
Difficulty in Queens is never arithmetic and never luck. Every board has one solution and none require guessing. What varies is the length of the chain you must follow before the next queen becomes certain — one or two steps on an easy board, five or six on a hard one, sometimes with several partial eliminations held in play at once.
Stuck on #229 despite the hard rating? The odds strongly favour a bookkeeping error over a hard chain of logic. Re-check each placed queen for its complete set of eliminations, paying particular attention to the four diagonal squares — those are the ones that get overlooked, and one of them is usually sitting on the answer.
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.
Learn the pairing argument and you will use it on every board, this one included. If two colors can only sit inside the same two rows, between them they consume both rows and every other color is shut out. It generalises to any matching count — three colors across three rows, four across four. On #229, start hunting for it near column 1.
A non-spoiling distribution check: solved, #229 carries 4 queens on the perimeter against 6 queens inside, with the corners empty. Because no two queens may touch, real solutions always look fairly evenly spread — a lopsided board in progress is a warning sign.
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.
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Questions about this puzzle
How hard is 10x10 Queens puzzle #229?
Puzzle #229 is rated hard. Its smallest color region holds 1 square, its tightest row is touched by 3 colors, and four of its regions are confined to a single row or column, which gives you a forced move early.
Does 10x10 puzzle #229 have only one solution?
Yes. Every puzzle in the 10x10 collection, including #229, 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 #229?
Start with the indigo region — the most constrained color on this board, with 1 square spanning rows 1–1 and columns 5–5. Narrowing the smallest region first removes the most squares elsewhere on the grid.