10x10 Queens Puzzle #254
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 12-step reasoning is written out below.
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Step-by-step solution for puzzle #254
What follows is a complete solve of puzzle #254, worked the way a person works it rather than the way a computer does. It runs to 12 deductions — 10 queen placements and 2 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 region confined to one line.
Techniques this board needs: last square in a region, region confined to one line.
Show the full walkthrough (8 steps) — contains the solution
Step 1. Only row 3, column 10 is still open in blue, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. That clears row 3, column 10, the rest of the blue 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 1. Every colour holds exactly one queen, so that square is forced. Cross out the whole of row 10 and column 1, the remaining sea green squares, and the ring of neighbours around row 10, column 1.
Step 3. Only row 2, column 3 is still open in amber, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. Everything else in row 2, in column 3, in amber and in the ring around that square is now dead.
Step 4. All of the indigo region's remaining squares (2 open squares) lie in row 1. Its queen therefore has to be somewhere on that row, which means no other colour may use it: 3 squares come off.
The board after step 4 — 3 of 10 queens placed. Step 5. Only row 4, column 6 is still open in mint, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. That clears row 4, column 6, the rest of the mint region and every square adjacent to it — diagonals included.
Step 6. The indigo region is down to one open square, at row 1, column 5. Every colour holds exactly one queen, so that square is forced. Cross out the whole of row 1 and column 5, the remaining indigo squares, and the ring of neighbours around row 1, column 5.
Step 7. Red cannot leave row 6 — every one of its open squares (2 open squares) sits there. That row belongs to red, so every square on it owned by another colour is dead: 7 squares in all.
Step 8. 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: pale yellow has one square left, so its queen takes row 7, column 7; red has one square left, so its queen takes row 6, column 9; orange has one square left, so its queen takes row 9, column 8; khaki has one square left, so its queen takes row 8, column 2; slate has one square left, so its queen takes row 5, column 4. 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 4.
The board after step 8 — 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 #254
Board #254 of the 10x10 bank carries a hard rating. Its 100 squares are shared between ten colored regions, and the solution places ten 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, #254 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 #254 are: blue (1 square), sea green (1 square), amber (7 squares), indigo (8 squares), red (8 squares), khaki (12 squares), pale yellow (13 squares), mint (14 squares), slate (17 squares), orange (19 squares). An even split would hand every color 10 squares, so the blue region is running 9 squares under that average while the orange region is the roomiest area on the grid with 19 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 blue, with 1 square, is under far more pressure than orange with 19. A 18-square gap like this one rewards players who start where the choices are fewest.
Square count is only half the story — how a color is arranged counts too. Blue is the tidiest shape on #254, packing 100% of its 1×1 bounding box, whereas pale yellow straggles across its 5×5 box at just 52%. Tidy blocks are easy to work around; scattered ones touch more lines and resist resolution.
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.
Blue occupies 1 square within rows 3–3, columns 10–10. It never leaves row 3, so its queen is locked to that row.
Sea green: 1 square across rows 10–10, columns 1–1. It never leaves row 10, so its queen is locked to that row.
Amber covers 7 squares, spanning 4 rows and 3 columns (rows 1–4, columns 1–3).
Indigo occupies 8 squares within rows 1–2, columns 2–6.
Red: 8 squares across rows 3–7, columns 8–10.
Khaki covers 12 squares, spanning 4 rows and 4 columns (rows 7–10, columns 1–4).
Pale yellow occupies 13 squares within rows 4–8, columns 5–9.
Mint: 14 squares across rows 1–4, columns 5–10.
Slate covers 17 squares, spanning 6 rows and 5 columns (rows 3–8, columns 1–5).
Orange occupies 19 squares within rows 7–10, columns 5–10.
Where to start on this board
The most constrained color is where a solve should begin, and on #254 that is blue with 1 square. It reaches from row 3 to row 3 and from column 10 to column 10 — 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 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. Sea green and indigo 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 #254
A quick way to find the next move is to count how many different colors touch each line. On this board, row 9 is the narrowest, touched by only 2 colors. Columns 4 and 7 are the tightest columns, with 3 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 7, meeting 5 colors, is the opposite case — the busiest line on #254 and the last one you should expect to crack.
Working through the middle game
Past the opening, treat this as an elimination exercise rather than a placement exercise. Each queen takes out a row, a column and its eight neighbours, and the value of a move is measured by how much it removes. Cross everything out as you go and let the board do the remembering.
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.
A placement without a reason is a guess. Because this board has exactly one solution, a guess that happens to be wrong will not announce itself for several moves — and unwinding it is slower than simply finishing the eliminations first.
Why puzzle #254 is rated hard
Ratings track how generous the opening is. On #254 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 18-square gap between the largest and smallest regions. Those four numbers largely explain the hard label.
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.
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 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 #254, start hunting for it near row 9.
Here is a shape check that gives nothing away: when #254 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.
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 #254?
Puzzle #254 is rated hard. 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 10x10 puzzle #254 have only one solution?
Yes. Every puzzle in the 10x10 collection, including #254, 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 #254?
Start with the blue region — the most constrained color on this board, with 1 square spanning rows 3–3 and columns 10–10. Narrowing the smallest region first removes the most squares elsewhere on the grid.