8x8 Queens Puzzle #141
Difficulty: medium. Place 8 queens on this 8x8 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 9-step reasoning is written out below.
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Step-by-step solution for puzzle #141
What follows is a complete solve of puzzle #141, worked the way a person works it rather than the way a computer does. It runs to 9 deductions — 8 queen placements and 1 elimination step 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 shadow.
Show the full walkthrough (5 steps) — contains the solution
Step 1. The board opens by cascading. Each of these placements is forced the moment the one before it is marked, so the whole run is really a single sweep repeated: pale yellow has one square left, so its queen takes row 7, column 5; khaki has one square left, so its queen takes row 8, column 7; red has one square left, so its queen takes row 6, column 1; slate has one square left, so its queen takes row 5, column 6; indigo has one square left, so its queen takes row 1, 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 1, column 4.
Step 2. The amber region has 3 squares left, spread across rows 2 and 3, columns 2 and 3. 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 3. Only row 4, column 3 is still open in mint, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. Everything else in row 4, in column 3, in mint and in the ring around that square is now dead.
The board after step 3 — 6 of 8 queens placed. Step 4. 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. Row 2 and column 2 are now spoken for, along with the squares touching that queen.
Step 5. Only row 3, column 8 is still open in blue, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. That clears row 3, column 8, the rest of the blue region and every square adjacent to it — diagonals included.
The board after step 5 — 8 of 8 queens placed.
That completes the board: 8 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 8x8 Queens puzzle #141
Puzzle #141 is one of the medium-rated boards in the 8x8 set. Eight colors divide its 64 squares, and you win by placing eight queens so that each row, each column and each color holds exactly one, with no two queens adjacent in any direction.
Like every board on this site, #141 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 #141 are: pale yellow (1 square), khaki (1 square), red (3 squares), indigo (4 squares), mint (7 squares), amber (10 squares), blue (14 squares), slate (24 squares). An even split would hand every color 8 squares, so the pale yellow region is running 7 squares under that average while the slate region is the roomiest area on the grid with 24 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 slate with 24. A 23-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. Red is the tidiest shape on #141, packing 100% of its 3×1 bounding box, whereas blue straggles across its 6×5 box at just 47%. Tidy blocks are easy to work around; scattered ones touch more lines and resist resolution.
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 medium board.
Pale yellow: 1 square across rows 7–7, columns 5–5. It never leaves row 7, so its queen is locked to that row.
Khaki covers 1 square, spanning 1 row and 1 column (rows 8–8, columns 7–7). It never leaves row 8, so its queen is locked to that row.
Red occupies 3 squares within rows 6–8, columns 1–1. It sits wholly inside column 1, so its queen must be in that column.
Indigo: 4 squares across rows 1–2, columns 4–6.
Mint covers 7 squares, spanning 3 rows and 4 columns (rows 4–6, columns 1–4).
Amber occupies 10 squares within rows 1–3, columns 1–4.
Blue: 14 squares across rows 1–6, columns 4–8.
Slate covers 24 squares, spanning 5 rows and 8 columns (rows 4–8, columns 1–8).
Where to start on this board
Open on the tightest color. Here that is pale yellow, confined to 1 square between rows 7 and 7 and columns 5 and 5. Its queen has nowhere else to go, which means those 1 row and 1 column carry more constraint than anywhere else on #141.
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. Khaki 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 #141
A quick way to find the next move is to count how many different colors touch each line. On this board, row 3 is the narrowest, touched by only 2 colors. Column 8 is the tightest column, with 2 colors.
A line with few colors is a line close to resolving. Where only 2 colors appear, one of them owns the row outright and the others must fit into the remaining 7 rows. Row 6 is the crowded extreme at 4 colors — worth revisiting later, not now.
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 eight colors looking for one with a single square left; sweep the eight rows and eight columns looking for the same. Each sweep feeds the next, and switching between them deliberately — rather than drifting — is what separates a fast 8x8 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 #141 is rated medium
The medium label comes out of four measurable things about #141: five of its regions are locked to one row or column, its smallest color spans 1 square, its least crowded row meets 2 colors, and its largest and smallest regions differ by 23. 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.
If #141 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 8x8
At 8x8 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 #141, start hunting for it near row 3.
A non-spoiling distribution check: solved, #141 carries 4 queens on the perimeter against 4 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 8x8 Queens puzzle #141?
Puzzle #141 is rated medium. Its smallest color region holds 1 square, its tightest row is touched by 2 colors, and five of its regions are confined to a single row or column, which gives you a forced move early.
Does 8x8 puzzle #141 have only one solution?
Yes. Every puzzle in the 8x8 collection, including #141, has been verified to have exactly one valid arrangement of eight queens, and it can always be reached by logic alone — no guessing or backtracking needed.
Where should I place my first queen on puzzle #141?
Start with the pale yellow region — the most constrained color on this board, with 1 square spanning rows 7–7 and columns 5–5. Narrowing the smallest region first removes the most squares elsewhere on the grid.