8x8 Queens Puzzle #201
Difficulty: hard. 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 15-step reasoning is written out below.
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Step-by-step solution for puzzle #201
What follows is a complete solve of puzzle #201, worked the way a person works it rather than the way a computer does. It runs to 15 deductions — 8 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, last square in a region, line confined to one region, last square in a column.
Show the full walkthrough (11 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. Amber is down to 6 candidates in rows 1–3, columns 1–3, and they overlap enough to cover 1 square elsewhere. Cross those out without deciding anything about amber itself.
Step 3. The mint region has 4 squares left, spread across rows 3–5, columns 4 and 5. You do not need to know which of them takes the queen: every one of those options attacks the same 2 squares, so they can be crossed out now.
Step 4. The red region is down to one open square, at row 6, column 5. Every colour holds exactly one queen, so that square is forced. Row 6 and column 5 are now spoken for, along with the squares touching that queen.
The board after step 4 — 1 of 8 queens placed. Step 5. Only row 4, column 4 is still open in mint, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. That clears row 4, column 4, 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 6. Every colour holds exactly one queen, so that square is forced. Cross out the whole of row 1 and column 6, the remaining indigo squares, and the ring of neighbours around row 1, column 6.
Step 7. Wherever amber ends up among its 3 squares, the same squares fall within reach of it — 1 square in total, impossible regardless of how the colour resolves.
The board after step 7 — 3 of 8 queens placed. Step 8. Khaki is down to 3 candidates in rows 7 and 8, columns 3 and 7, and they overlap enough to cover 1 square elsewhere. Cross those out without deciding anything about khaki itself.
Step 9. Column 2 has only slate squares left (3 open squares). The column needs a queen and only slate can provide one, which pins that colour to this column and kills its squares elsewhere: 4 squares.
Step 10. Every open square left in column 1 (2 open squares) belongs to the amber region. Since that column must contain a queen, amber is the colour that supplies it — so amber squares anywhere else on the board are out, 1 square in all.
Step 11. 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: column 3 is down to one square, putting a queen on row 8, column 3; slate has one square left, so its queen takes row 5, column 2; pale yellow has one square left, so its queen takes row 7, column 8; blue has one square left, so its queen takes row 3, column 7; amber has one square left, so its queen takes row 2, column 1. 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 1.
The board after step 11 — 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 #201
Puzzle #201 is one of the hard-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.
As with every puzzle in this collection, #201 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 #201 are: red (2 squares), indigo (5 squares), mint (5 squares), amber (6 squares), pale yellow (8 squares), khaki (8 squares), blue (11 squares), slate (19 squares). An even split would hand every color 8 squares, so the red region is running 6 squares under that average while the slate 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 red, with 2 squares, is under far more pressure than slate with 19. A 17-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 #201, packing 100% of its 2×1 bounding box, whereas indigo straggles across its 3×3 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 #201 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.
Red: 2 squares across rows 5–6, columns 5–5. It sits wholly inside column 5, so its queen must be in that column.
Indigo covers 5 squares, spanning 3 rows and 3 columns (rows 1–3, columns 4–6).
Mint occupies 5 squares within rows 2–5, columns 4–5.
Amber: 6 squares across rows 1–3, columns 1–3.
Pale yellow covers 8 squares, spanning 4 rows and 3 columns (rows 5–8, columns 6–8).
Khaki occupies 8 squares within rows 7–8, columns 3–7.
Blue: 11 squares across rows 1–4, columns 6–8.
Slate covers 19 squares, spanning 7 rows and 4 columns (rows 2–8, columns 1–4).
Where to start on this board
Open on the tightest color. Here that is red, confined to 2 squares between rows 5 and 6 and columns 5 and 5. Its queen has nowhere else to go, which means those 2 rows and 1 column carry more constraint than anywhere else on #201.
Because red stays inside column 5, its queen belongs to that column and no other region may use it. Cross out the rest of column 5 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. Khaki 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 #201
A quick way to find the next move is to count how many different colors touch each line. On this board, rows 1, 4, 6, 7 and 8 are the narrowest, touched by only 3 colors. Columns 1, 2 and 8 are the tightest columns, with 2 colors.
Count colors per line and you have a ranking of where to look. The narrowest rows here see only 3 colors, so one of that handful must take the row and the rest are squeezed into the other 7 rows. Row 3 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.
Keep alternating between two views of the board. In the region view you ask which of the eight colors is down to one open square. In the line view you ask the same of each row and column. Both produce forced queens, and each placement refreshes the other view, so cycling between them deliberately is how a 8x8 board unwinds.
The trap on a board like this is placing a queen that is merely plausible. Every placement should be traceable to an elimination you can point at. If you cannot name the rule that forced it, you are guessing — and on a single-solution grid a guess costs more to unwind than the deduction would have taken to find.
Why puzzle #201 is rated hard
What earns a board its rating is the shape of its opening. Here that opening offers one single-line region, a 2-square smallest color, a tightest row touched by 3 colors, and a region-size spread of 17. Lopsided grids with flat regions fall quickly; balanced ones like this take more patience.
The scale has nothing to do with maths or luck — every puzzle here is solvable by deduction and has exactly one answer. It measures reasoning depth: how many eliminations must stack up before a placement becomes provable. That depth is what separates a hard board from the rest.
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 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 #201, start hunting for it near column 1.
Use this as a rough check on your progress: the completed board has 4 queens around the border and 4 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 8x8 Queens puzzle #201?
Puzzle #201 is rated hard. Its smallest color region holds 2 squares, its tightest row is touched by 3 colors, and one of its regions is confined to a single row or column, which gives you a forced move early.
Does 8x8 puzzle #201 have only one solution?
Yes. Every puzzle in the 8x8 collection, including #201, 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 #201?
Start with the red region — the most constrained color on this board, with 2 squares spanning rows 5–6 and columns 5–5. Narrowing the smallest region first removes the most squares elsewhere on the grid.