8x8 Queens Puzzle #206
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 11-step reasoning is written out below.
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Step-by-step solution for puzzle #206
What follows is a complete solve of puzzle #206, worked the way a person works it rather than the way a computer does. It runs to 11 deductions — 8 queen placements and 3 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 confined to one line.
Techniques this board needs: last square in a region, region confined to one line.
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: indigo has one square left, so its queen takes row 1, column 6; khaki has one square left, so its queen takes row 8, column 2; amber has one square left, so its queen takes row 2, column 1; blue has one square left, so its queen takes row 3, column 8. 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 3, column 8.
Step 2. Mint cannot leave row 4 — every one of its open squares (2 open squares) sits there. That row belongs to mint, so every square on it owned by another colour is dead: 3 squares in all.
Step 3. All of the slate region's remaining squares (2 open squares) lie in column 7. Its queen therefore has to be somewhere in that column, which means no other colour may use it: 1 square come off.
The board after step 3 — 4 of 8 queens placed. Step 4. Pale yellow cannot leave column 5 — every one of its open squares (2 open squares) sits there. That column belongs to pale yellow, so every square in it owned by another colour is dead: 3 squares in all.
Step 5. From here the board cascades. Keep alternating the region sweep and the line sweep and 4 queens fall out in order without any new idea being needed: mint has one square left, so its queen takes row 4, column 4; red has one square left, so its queen takes row 6, column 3; slate has one square left, so its queen takes row 5, column 7; pale yellow has one square left, so its queen takes row 7, 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 7, column 5.
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 #206
Board #206 of the 8x8 bank carries a hard rating. Its 64 squares are shared between eight colored regions, and the solution places eight 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, #206 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 #206 are: indigo (1 square), khaki (1 square), amber (4 squares), blue (6 squares), slate (10 squares), pale yellow (11 squares), mint (14 squares), red (17 squares). An even split would hand every color 8 squares, so the indigo region is running 7 squares under that average while the red region is the roomiest area on the grid with 17 squares.
That imbalance is the first thing to read, because every region takes exactly one queen regardless of how much space it owns. Indigo has only 1 place to put its queen; red has 17. The spread between them on this board is 16 squares, and the wider that spread runs, the more it pays to solve from the small end inward.
Look at arrangement as well as area. Indigo is the densest region on this grid at 100% of a 1×1 frame; slate is the loosest, occupying only 67% of its 5×3 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 #206, smallest first. Reading these spans before you place anything is the quickest way to see which parts of the grid are genuinely contested.
Indigo occupies 1 square within rows 1–1, columns 6–6. It never leaves row 1, so its queen is locked to that row.
Khaki: 1 square across rows 8–8, columns 2–2. It never leaves row 8, so its queen is locked to that row.
Amber covers 4 squares, spanning 2 rows and 2 columns (rows 1–2, columns 1–2).
Blue occupies 6 squares within rows 1–3, columns 6–8.
Slate: 10 squares across rows 3–7, columns 6–8.
Pale yellow covers 11 squares, spanning 4 rows and 4 columns (rows 5–8, columns 5–8).
Mint occupies 14 squares within rows 1–4, columns 1–5.
Red: 17 squares across rows 4–8, columns 1–4.
Where to start on this board
Indigo is the natural opening on #206: it is the smallest region on the grid at 1 square, boxed into rows 1–1 and columns 6–6. Since one of those squares must hold a queen, that block of 1 row and 1 column is the most contested part of the board.
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. Khaki and amber 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 #206
A quick way to find the next move is to count how many different colors touch each line. On this board, rows 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 are the narrowest, touched by only 3 colors. Columns 3, 4 and 5 are the tightest columns, with 2 colors.
A line with few colors is a line close to resolving. Where only 3 colors appear, one of them owns the row outright and the others must fit into the remaining 7 rows. Row 1 is the crowded extreme at 4 colors — worth revisiting later, not now.
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.
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.
Say the reason out loud: "this region has one square left", "this column has one square left". If no such sentence is available, the eliminating is not finished. One more pass of X marks is almost always quicker than committing to a placement you cannot defend.
Why puzzle #206 is rated hard
The rating reflects how much the board concedes up front. Puzzle #206 has four regions confined to a single row or column, its smallest color holds 1 square, its tightest row meets just 3 colors, and the gap between its largest and smallest regions is 16 squares. Flat, lopsided boards open quickly; even, sprawling ones make you earn the first placement.
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.
One pattern is worth learning at every size, and it is available here. When two regions can only fit inside the same two rows, they must take one row each — which locks every other region out of both. The same argument works for columns, and for any matching count: three regions sharing three rows, four sharing four. Spotting these pairings turns a slow grind into a quick cascade, and on #206 the place to look for one is around column 3.
A non-spoiling distribution check: solved, #206 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 #206?
Puzzle #206 is rated hard. Its smallest color region holds 1 square, its tightest row is touched by 3 colors, and four of its regions are confined to a single row or column, which gives you a forced move early.
Does 8x8 puzzle #206 have only one solution?
Yes. Every puzzle in the 8x8 collection, including #206, 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 #206?
Start with the indigo region — the most constrained color on this board, with 1 square spanning rows 1–1 and columns 6–6. Narrowing the smallest region first removes the most squares elsewhere on the grid.