8x8 Queens Puzzle #214
Difficulty: easy. 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 17-step reasoning is written out below.
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Step-by-step solution for puzzle #214
What follows is a complete solve of puzzle #214, worked the way a person works it rather than the way a computer does. It runs to 17 deductions — 8 queen placements and 9 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, last square in a region, line confined to one region, last square in a row.
Show the full walkthrough (11 steps) — contains the solution
Step 1. Wherever blue 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.
Step 2. All of the mint region's remaining squares (3 open squares) lie in column 4. Its queen therefore has to be somewhere in that column, which means no other colour may use it: 7 squares come off.
Step 3. Slate cannot leave column 8 — every one of its open squares (2 open squares) sits there. That column belongs to slate, so every square in it owned by another colour is dead: 8 squares in all.
Step 4. All of the blue region's remaining squares (3 open squares) lie in column 6. Its queen therefore has to be somewhere in that column, which means no other colour may use it: 5 squares come off.
The board after step 4 — 0 of 8 queens placed. Step 5. Only row 8, column 7 is still open in khaki, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. That clears row 8, column 7, the rest of the khaki region and every square adjacent to it — diagonals included.
Step 6. All of the red region's remaining squares (2 open squares) lie in column 5. Its queen therefore has to be somewhere in that column, which means no other colour may use it: 4 squares come off.
Step 7. 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.
The board after step 7 — 1 of 8 queens placed. Step 8. All of the mint region's remaining squares (2 open squares) lie in column 4. Its queen therefore has to be somewhere in that column, which means no other colour may use it: 1 square come off.
Step 9. The pale yellow region has 5 squares left, spread across rows 6 and 7, columns 1–3. 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 10. Every open square left in row 1 (3 open squares) belongs to the indigo region. Since that row must contain a queen, indigo is the colour that supplies it — so indigo squares anywhere else on the board are out, 2 squares in all.
Step 11. 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 2 is down to one square, putting a queen on row 2, column 1; indigo has one square left, so its queen takes row 1, column 3; pale yellow has one square left, so its queen takes row 7, column 2; red has one square left, so its queen takes row 6, column 5; mint has one square left, so its queen takes row 4, column 4; blue has one square left, so its queen takes row 3, column 6; slate has one square left, so its queen takes row 5, 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 5, column 8.
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 #214
Board #214 of the 8x8 bank carries a easy 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.
Like every board on this site, #214 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 #214 are: slate (2 squares), blue (4 squares), mint (4 squares), khaki (5 squares), pale yellow (9 squares), amber (10 squares), red (11 squares), indigo (19 squares). An even split would hand every color 8 squares, so the slate region is running 6 squares under that average while the indigo 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 slate, with 2 squares, is under far more pressure than indigo with 19. A 17-square gap like this one rewards players who start where the choices are fewest.
Look at arrangement as well as area. Slate is the densest region on this grid at 100% of a 2×1 frame; red is the loosest, occupying only 55% of its 4×5 frame. The loose one reaches into more rows and columns, which is exactly why it usually settles last.
Region by region
The complete breakdown of each region on this board follows, ordered from tightest to roomiest. Skimming the spans first tells you where the board is crowded and where it has slack.
Slate covers 2 squares, spanning 2 rows and 1 column (rows 4–5, columns 8–8). It sits wholly inside column 8, so its queen must be in that column.
Blue occupies 4 squares within rows 3–5, columns 6–7.
Mint: 4 squares across rows 4–6, columns 4–5.
Khaki covers 5 squares, spanning 2 rows and 3 columns (rows 7–8, columns 6–8).
Pale yellow occupies 9 squares within rows 5–8, columns 1–3.
Amber: 10 squares across rows 2–6, columns 1–3.
Red covers 11 squares, spanning 4 rows and 5 columns (rows 5–8, columns 4–8).
Indigo occupies 19 squares within rows 1–3, columns 1–8.
Where to start on this board
Slate is the natural opening on #214: it is the smallest region on the grid at 2 squares, boxed into rows 4–5 and columns 8–8. Since one of those squares must hold a queen, that block of 2 rows and 1 column is the most contested part of the board.
Because slate stays inside column 8, its queen belongs to that column and no other region may use it. Cross out the rest of column 8 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 #214
A quick way to find the next move is to count how many different colors touch each line. On this board, row 1 is the narrowest, touched by only 1 color. Columns 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 are the tightest columns, with 3 colors.
The fewer colors a line touches, the sooner it surrenders its queen. A row meeting just 1 color has to be claimed by one of them, which pushes every remaining region into the other 7 rows. Row 5, meeting 6 colors, is the opposite case — the busiest line on #214 and the last one you should expect to crack.
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 eight queens to seat and eight regions competing over 64 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 8x8 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 #214 is rated easy
Ratings track how generous the opening is. On #214 you get one region pinned to a single row or column, a smallest color of 2 squares, a tightest row crossed by 1 color, and a 17-square gap between the largest and smallest regions. Those four numbers largely explain the easy label.
Rating is a measure of chain length, not of chance. With one guaranteed solution and no guessing required, the only thing that changes across the collection is how many eliminations you must link together before a queen is provably forced.
If #214 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 #214, start hunting for it near row 1.
Here is a shape check that gives nothing away: when #214 is solved, 4 queens sit on the outer edge of the grid and 4 sit inside it, and no queen lands in a corner. A work-in-progress board that clusters its queens in one quadrant while leaving others bare is usually carrying a mistake.
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 #214?
Puzzle #214 is rated easy. Its smallest color region holds 2 squares, its tightest row is touched by 1 color, and one of its regions is confined to a single row or column, which gives you a forced move early.
Does 8x8 puzzle #214 have only one solution?
Yes. Every puzzle in the 8x8 collection, including #214, 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 #214?
Start with the slate region — the most constrained color on this board, with 2 squares spanning rows 4–5 and columns 8–8. Narrowing the smallest region first removes the most squares elsewhere on the grid.