7x7 Queens Puzzle #54

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 11-step reasoning is written out below.

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Step-by-step solution for puzzle #54

What follows is a complete solve of puzzle #54, worked the way a person works it rather than the way a computer does. It runs to 11 deductions — 7 queen placements and 4 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 shadow.

Techniques this board needs: last square in a region, region confined to one line, region shadow, last square in a row.

Show the full walkthrough (7 steps) — contains the solution

  1. Step 1. Only row 7, column 1 is still open in pale yellow, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. That clears row 7, column 1, the rest of the pale yellow region and every square adjacent to it — diagonals included.

  2. Step 2. The amber region is down to one open square, at row 2, column 2. Every colour holds exactly one queen, so that square is forced. Cross out the whole of row 2 and column 2, the remaining amber squares, and the ring of neighbours around row 2, column 2.

  3. Step 3. Blue cannot leave column 7 — every one of its open squares (2 open squares) sits there. That column belongs to blue, so every square in it owned by another colour is dead: 5 squares in all.

  4. Step 4. Wherever slate ends up among its 4 squares, the same squares fall within reach of it — 1 square in total, impossible regardless of how the colour resolves.

    Puzzle #54 after step 4: 2 of 7 queens placed
    The board after step 4 — 2 of 7 queens placed.

  5. Step 5. Mint is down to 5 candidates in rows 3–5, columns 3–5, and they overlap enough to cover 1 square elsewhere. Cross those out without deciding anything about mint itself.

  6. Step 6. All of the red region's remaining squares (2 open squares) lie in row 6. Its queen therefore has to be somewhere on that row, which means no other colour may use it: 4 squares come off.

  7. Step 7. 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 5 is down to one square, putting a queen on row 5, column 6; blue has one square left, so its queen takes row 3, column 7; mint has one square left, so its queen takes row 4, column 4; indigo has one square left, so its queen takes row 1, column 5; red has one square left, so its queen takes row 6, 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 6, column 3.

    Puzzle #54 after step 7: 7 of 7 queens placed
    The board after step 7 — 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 #54

Board #54 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.

As with every puzzle in this collection, #54 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 #54 are: pale yellow (1 square), amber (3 squares), blue (4 squares), mint (6 squares), indigo (11 squares), slate (12 squares), red (12 squares). An even split would hand every color 7 squares, so the pale yellow region is running 6 squares under that average while the red region is the roomiest area on the grid with 12 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 pale yellow, with 1 square, is under far more pressure than red with 12. A 11-square gap like this one rewards players who start where the choices are fewest.

Look at arrangement as well as area. Pale yellow is the densest region on this grid at 100% of a 1×1 frame; indigo is the loosest, occupying only 46% of its 4×6 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 #54, smallest first. Reading these spans before you place anything is the quickest way to see which parts of the grid are genuinely contested.

Pale yellow: 1 square across rows 7–7, columns 1–1. It never leaves row 7, so its queen is locked to that row.

Amber covers 3 squares, spanning 2 rows and 2 columns (rows 1–2, columns 1–2).

Blue occupies 4 squares within rows 2–4, columns 6–7.

Mint: 6 squares across rows 3–5, columns 3–5.

Indigo covers 11 squares, spanning 4 rows and 6 columns (rows 1–4, columns 2–7).

Slate occupies 12 squares within rows 3–7, columns 4–7.

Red: 12 squares across rows 3–7, columns 1–4.

Where to start on this board

Begin where the choices are fewest. On this board that means pale yellow, which owns just 1 square inside a 1×1 window running from row 7 to row 7 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 pale yellow never leaves row 7, its queen must be in that row — and that instantly settles row 7 for everyone else. Sweep along it and X out every square that is not pale yellow. 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. Amber is no more than two rows tall, so its queen is 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 #54

A quick way to find the next move is to count how many different colors touch each line. On this board, rows 1 and 6 are the narrowest, touched by only 2 colors. Columns 1, 2, 3, 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 2 colors, 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 5 colors crossing it; it will almost certainly be among the last to settle.

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 seven colors looking for one with a single square left; sweep the seven rows and seven columns looking for the same. Each sweep feeds the next, and switching between them deliberately — rather than drifting — is what separates a fast 7x7 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 #54 is rated hard

The rating reflects how much the board concedes up front. Puzzle #54 has two 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 11 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.

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 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 #54, start hunting for it near row 1.

Use this as a rough check on your progress: the completed board has 3 queens around the border and 4 queens in the middle, including 1 in a corner. Solutions spread out; if yours is bunching up in one region of the grid, retrace a few moves.

How to play Queens

  1. The board is an N×N grid divided into N colored regions.
  2. Place exactly one queen (♛) in each row, each column, and each colored region.
  3. No two queens may touch each other — not horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.
  4. 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.
  5. 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 #54?

Puzzle #54 is rated hard. Its smallest color region holds 1 square, its tightest row is touched by 2 colors, and two of its regions are confined to a single row or column, which gives you a forced move early.

Does 7x7 puzzle #54 have only one solution?

Yes. Every puzzle in the 7x7 collection, including #54, 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 #54?

Start with the pale yellow region — the most constrained color on this board, with 1 square spanning rows 7–7 and columns 1–1. Narrowing the smallest region first removes the most squares elsewhere on the grid.