7x7 Queens Puzzle #234
Difficulty: hard. Place 7 queens on this 7x7 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 14-step reasoning is written out below.
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Step-by-step solution for puzzle #234
What follows is a complete solve of puzzle #234, worked the way a person works it rather than the way a computer does. It runs to 14 deductions — 7 queen placements and 7 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 line confined to one region.
Techniques this board needs: region shadow, region confined to one line, line confined to one region, last square in a row, last square in a column, last square in a region.
Show the full walkthrough (8 steps) — contains the solution
Step 1. Wherever indigo 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.
Step 2. All of the blue region's remaining squares (2 open squares) lie in column 1. Its queen therefore has to be somewhere in that column, which means no other colour may use it: 7 squares come off.
Step 3. The indigo region has 4 squares left, spread across rows 1 and 2, columns 2–4. 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 4. Wherever mint 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.
The board after step 4 — 0 of 7 queens placed. Step 5. Slate is down to 4 candidates in rows 3–5, columns 2 and 3, and they overlap enough to cover 1 square elsewhere. Cross those out without deciding anything about slate itself.
Step 6. All of the pale yellow region's remaining squares (3 open squares) lie in row 7. Its queen therefore has to be somewhere on that row, which means no other colour may use it: 4 squares come off.
Step 7. Row 6 has only red squares left (5 open squares). The row needs a queen and only red can provide one, which pins that colour to this row and kills its squares elsewhere: 6 squares.
Step 8. From here the board cascades. Keep alternating the region sweep and the line sweep and 7 queens fall out in order without any new idea being needed: row 5 is down to one square, putting a queen on row 5, column 3; row 4 is down to one square, putting a queen on row 4, column 7; column 2 is down to one square, putting a queen on row 1, column 2; blue has one square left, so its queen takes row 3, column 1; column 4 is down to one square, putting a queen on row 7, column 4; red has one square left, so its queen takes row 6, column 6; amber has one square left, so its queen takes row 2, column 5. 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 5.
The board after step 8 — 7 of 7 queens placed.
That completes the board: 7 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 7x7 Queens puzzle #234
Board #234 of the 7x7 bank carries a hard rating. Its 49 squares are shared between seven colored regions, and the solution places seven queens: one per row, one per column, one per region, none of them side by side or corner to corner.
Like every board on this site, #234 has been verified to have exactly one valid solution, and that solution is reachable by deduction alone. You never have to guess and then unwind; every queen can be justified by something already visible on the grid. What changes from puzzle to puzzle is where the first certainty appears and how long the chain of reasoning runs before the next one — and that is entirely a product of how these particular colors are shaped.
How the colors divide this board
From smallest to largest, the regions on puzzle #234 are: blue (2 squares), mint (3 squares), pale yellow (3 squares), indigo (5 squares), slate (7 squares), amber (9 squares), red (20 squares). An even split would hand every color 7 squares, so the blue region is running 5 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 blue, with 2 squares, is under far more pressure than red with 20. 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 #234, packing 100% of its 2×1 bounding box, whereas amber straggles across its 4×4 box at just 56%. Tidy blocks are easy to work around; scattered ones touch more lines and resist resolution.
Region by region
Below is every color on #234 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: 2 squares across rows 2–3, columns 1–1. It sits wholly inside column 1, so its queen must be in that column.
Mint covers 3 squares, spanning 2 rows and 2 columns (rows 3–4, columns 6–7).
Pale yellow occupies 3 squares within rows 7–7, columns 3–5. It never leaves row 7, so its queen is locked to that row.
Indigo: 5 squares across rows 1–2, columns 1–4.
Slate covers 7 squares, spanning 4 rows and 2 columns (rows 2–5, columns 2–3).
Amber occupies 9 squares within rows 1–4, columns 4–7.
Red: 20 squares across rows 4–7, columns 1–7.
Where to start on this board
Begin where the choices are fewest. On this board that means blue, which owns just 2 squares inside a 2×1 window running from row 2 to row 3 and column 1 to column 1. A queen is guaranteed somewhere in there, so every line that window crosses is under pressure from the very first move.
Because blue 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, indigo and mint 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 #234
A quick way to find the next move is to count how many different colors touch each line. On this board, row 6 is the narrowest, touched by only 1 color. Columns 1, 2, 5, 6 and 7 are the tightest columns, with 3 colors.
Count colors per line and you have a ranking of where to look. The narrowest rows here see only 1 color, so one of that handful must take the row and the rest are squeezed into the other 6 rows. Row 4 sits at the far end with 4 colors crossing it; it will almost certainly be among the last to settle.
Working through the middle game
After the first few queens the puzzle becomes bookkeeping. A placed queen wipes its row, its column and every square it touches — as many as eight neighbours — so the space collapses quickly. Record those eliminations on the board instead of carrying them in your head, and the next forced move tends to announce itself.
With seven queens to seat and seven regions competing over 49 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 7x7 boards quickly and players who stall halfway.
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 #234 is rated hard
What earns a board its rating is the shape of its opening. Here that opening offers two single-line regions, a 2-square smallest color, a tightest row touched by 1 color, and a region-size spread of 18. Lopsided grids with flat regions fall quickly; balanced ones like this take more patience.
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.
If #234 feels harder than its rating suggests, the usual culprit is incomplete marking rather than a difficult deduction. Check that every queen already on the grid has its full cross of eliminations recorded — including the diagonal neighbours, which are by far the easiest to miss. More stalled solves come from one forgotten diagonal X than from any genuinely deep chain of logic.
Techniques that work well at 7x7
At 7x7 the whole grid stays within a single glance, which makes systematic scanning practical. Read the rows in order and count the colors in each — a row touched by two colors is far more constrained than one touched by five, and that is usually where the next forced move hides. The board is small enough that re-scanning from the top after each placement costs almost nothing.
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 #234, start hunting for it near row 6.
Use this as a rough check on your progress: the completed board has 4 queens around the border and 3 queens in the middle, and nothing in the corners. Solutions spread out; if yours is bunching up in one region of the grid, retrace a few moves.
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 7x7 Queens puzzle #234?
Puzzle #234 is rated hard. Its smallest color region holds 2 squares, its tightest row is touched by 1 color, and two of its regions are confined to a single row or column, which gives you a forced move early.
Does 7x7 puzzle #234 have only one solution?
Yes. Every puzzle in the 7x7 collection, including #234, has been verified to have exactly one valid arrangement of seven queens, and it can always be reached by logic alone — no guessing or backtracking needed.
Where should I place my first queen on puzzle #234?
Start with the blue region — the most constrained color on this board, with 2 squares spanning rows 2–3 and columns 1–1. Narrowing the smallest region first removes the most squares elsewhere on the grid.