12x12 Queens Puzzle #189

About 12x12 Queens puzzle #189

Puzzle #189 is one of the easy-rated boards in the 12x12 set. Twelve colors divide its 144 squares, and you win by placing twelve 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 #189, 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 twelve regions is what sets the depth.

How the colors divide this board

From smallest to largest, the regions on puzzle #189 are: indigo (1 square), mint (1 square), khaki (1 square), teal (1 square), sea green (3 squares), blue (7 squares), slate (12 squares), rose (18 squares), amber (19 squares), red (20 squares), pale yellow (28 squares), orange (33 squares). An even split would hand every color 12 squares, so the indigo region is running 11 squares under that average while the orange region is the roomiest area on the grid with 33 squares.

Every color takes one queen and one only, whatever its size — which is why the 32 square difference between indigo and orange is worth noting before you touch the grid. The cramped colors resolve first and hand you information; the roomy ones absorb whatever is left over at the end.

Look at arrangement as well as area. Indigo is the densest region on this grid at 100% of a 1×1 frame; amber is the loosest, occupying only 53% of its 6×6 frame. The loose one reaches into more rows and columns, which is exactly why it usually settles last.

Region by region

Here is the full footprint of every color on puzzle #189, smallest first. Reading these spans before you place anything is the quickest way to see which parts of the grid are genuinely contested.

Indigo: 1 square across rows 1–1, columns 12–12. It never leaves row 1, so its queen is locked to that row.

Mint covers 1 square, spanning 1 row and 1 column (rows 4–4, columns 5–5). It never leaves row 4, so its queen is locked to that row.

Khaki occupies 1 square within rows 8–8, columns 4–4. It never leaves row 8, so its queen is locked to that row.

Teal: 1 square across rows 11–11, columns 8–8. It never leaves row 11, so its queen is locked to that row.

Sea green covers 3 squares, spanning 3 rows and 1 column (rows 9–11, columns 1–1). It sits wholly inside column 1, so its queen must be in that column.

Blue occupies 7 squares within rows 2–4, columns 9–12.

Slate: 12 squares across rows 5–11, columns 10–12.

Rose covers 18 squares, spanning 4 rows and 7 columns (rows 9–12, columns 1–7).

Amber occupies 19 squares within rows 1–6, columns 2–7.

Red: 20 squares across rows 1–6, columns 7–11.

Pale yellow covers 28 squares, spanning 9 rows and 5 columns (rows 1–9, columns 1–5).

Orange occupies 33 squares within rows 6–12, columns 5–12.

Where to start on this board

Open on the tightest color. Here that is indigo, confined to 1 square between rows 1 and 1 and columns 12 and 12. Its queen has nowhere else to go, which means those 1 row and 1 column carry more constraint than anywhere else on #189.

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. Mint, khaki and teal 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 #189

A quick way to find the next move is to count how many different colors touch each line. On this board, row 12 is the narrowest, touched by only 2 colors. Columns 1, 2, 3, 6, 8 and 9 are the tightest columns, with 3 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 11 rows. By contrast row 11 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.

Two checks, run alternately, will carry you through the 144 squares of this grid. First: has any of the twelve regions been reduced to a single open square? Second: has any row or column? Either answer forces a queen. Players who stall on 12x12 boards almost always run one of those checks and forget the other.

Resist the plausible-looking queen. On #189 every correct placement has a stated reason behind it, and any move you cannot justify is a guess wearing a disguise. Backing out of a wrong guess on a single-solution board takes far longer than finding the real deduction would have.

Why puzzle #189 is rated easy

The rating reflects how much the board concedes up front. Puzzle #189 has nine regions confined to a single row or column, its smallest color holds 1 square, its tightest row meets just 2 colors, and the gap between its largest and smallest regions is 32 squares. Flat, lopsided boards open quickly; even, sprawling ones make you earn the first placement.

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.

Stuck on #189 despite the easy 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 12x12

At 12x12 you are managing 144 squares, and holding the whole board in your head will not work. Split it into quadrants and solve locally. Most useful deductions on a grid this large are regional — a color pinched between two placed queens, or a band of rows that two regions must share. Trust the marks on the board over your memory.

There is one technique that repays study at every grid size. Two regions restricted to the same two rows must occupy one row apiece, which excludes all other regions from those rows entirely; the identical logic applies to columns and to larger matched sets. It converts slow boards into fast ones, and the likeliest place to find it on #189 is row 12.

As a sanity check rather than a spoiler: the finished solution to #189 puts 3 queens on the outer border and 9 queens in the interior, 1 of them in an actual 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.