8x8 Queens Puzzle #258
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 15-step reasoning is written out below.
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Step-by-step solution for puzzle #258
What follows is a complete solve of puzzle #258, 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 region shadow.
Techniques this board needs: region confined to one line, last square in a region, region shadow.
Show the full walkthrough (10 steps) — contains the solution
Step 1. Indigo cannot leave row 1 — every one of its open squares (4 open squares) sits there. That row belongs to indigo, so every square on it owned by another colour is dead: 4 squares in all.
Step 2. All of the mint region's remaining squares (2 open squares) lie in column 8. Its queen therefore has to be somewhere in that column, which means no other colour may use it: 7 squares come off.
Step 3. Only row 8, column 7 is still open in khaki, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. Everything else in row 8, in column 7, in khaki and in the ring around that square is now dead.
The board after step 3 — 1 of 8 queens placed. Step 4. Wherever slate ends up among its 3 squares, the same squares fall within reach of it — 3 squares in total, impossible regardless of how the colour resolves.
Step 5. 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.
Step 6. All of the indigo region's remaining squares (3 open squares) lie in row 1. Its queen therefore has to be somewhere on that row, which means no other colour may use it: 1 square come off.
Step 7. Wherever slate ends up among its 2 squares, the same squares fall within reach of it — 2 squares in total, impossible regardless of how the colour resolves.
The board after step 7 — 2 of 8 queens placed. Step 8. Blue is down to 3 candidates in rows 3 and 4, columns 2 and 3, and they overlap enough to cover 1 square elsewhere. Cross those out without deciding anything about blue itself.
Step 9. Red cannot leave row 6 — every one of its open squares (2 open squares) sits there. That row belongs to red, so every square on it owned by another colour is dead: 4 squares in all.
Step 10. From here the board cascades. Keep alternating the region sweep and the line sweep and 6 queens fall out in order without any new idea being needed: slate has one square left, so its queen takes row 5, column 2; blue has one square left, so its queen takes row 3, column 3; indigo has one square left, so its queen takes row 1, column 4; mint has one square left, so its queen takes row 4, column 8; amber has one square left, so its queen takes row 2, column 6; red has one square left, so its queen takes row 6, 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 6, column 5.
The board after step 10 — 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 #258
Board #258 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.
There is exactly one way to finish #258, and it has been verified. More importantly, you can reach it without ever gambling: at every stage some square is provably right or provably wrong. Boards differ only in how deep you must dig before that proof appears, and the geometry of these eight regions is what sets the depth.
How the colors divide this board
From smallest to largest, the regions on puzzle #258 are: mint (2 squares), slate (3 squares), indigo (4 squares), khaki (4 squares), blue (6 squares), pale yellow (6 squares), red (9 squares), amber (30 squares). An even split would hand every color 8 squares, so the mint region is running 6 squares under that average while the amber region is the roomiest area on the grid with 30 squares.
That imbalance is the first thing to read, because every region takes exactly one queen regardless of how much space it owns. Mint has only 2 places to put its queen; amber has 30. The spread between them on this board is 28 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 1×4 frame; amber is the loosest, occupying only 54% of its 7×8 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 #258, smallest first. Reading these spans before you place anything is the quickest way to see which parts of the grid are genuinely contested.
Mint: 2 squares across rows 4–5, columns 8–8. It sits wholly inside column 8, so its queen must be in that column.
Slate covers 3 squares, spanning 2 rows and 2 columns (rows 5–6, columns 2–3).
Indigo occupies 4 squares within rows 1–1, columns 1–4. It never leaves row 1, so its queen is locked to that row.
Khaki: 4 squares across rows 6–8, columns 7–8.
Blue covers 6 squares, spanning 3 rows and 3 columns (rows 3–5, columns 1–3).
Pale yellow occupies 6 squares within rows 6–8, columns 1–3.
Red: 9 squares across rows 6–8, columns 4–7.
Amber covers 30 squares, spanning 7 rows and 8 columns (rows 1–7, columns 1–8).
Where to start on this board
Mint is the natural opening on #258: 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 mint 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. Indigo and slate 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 #258
A quick way to find the next move is to count how many different colors touch each line. On this board, row 2 is the narrowest, touched by only 1 color. Columns 5 and 6 are the tightest columns, with 2 colors.
Those lines matter because a row touched by few colors gives its queen away sooner. If a row meets only 1 color, then one of those regions has to own it, and every other region is competing for the remaining 7 rows. By contrast row 6 meets 5 colors — the most crowded line here, and the one least likely to resolve early. Spend your attention accordingly.
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 #258 is rated easy
The rating reflects how much the board concedes up front. Puzzle #258 has two regions confined to a single row or column, its smallest color holds 2 squares, its tightest row meets just 1 color, and the gap between its largest and smallest regions is 28 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 easy board from the rest.
Stuck on #258 despite the easy rating? The odds strongly favour a bookkeeping error over a hard chain of logic. Re-check each placed queen for its complete set of eliminations, paying particular attention to the four diagonal squares — those are the ones that get overlooked, and one of them is usually sitting on the answer.
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 #258 the place to look for one is around row 2.
As a sanity check rather than a spoiler: the finished solution to #258 puts 4 queens on the outer border and 4 queens in the interior, with none in a corner. If your part-finished grid has queens bunched into one area while whole stretches sit empty, something probably went wrong a few moves back.
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 #258?
Puzzle #258 is rated easy. Its smallest color region holds 2 squares, its tightest row is touched by 1 color, and two of its regions are confined to a single row or column, which gives you a forced move early.
Does 8x8 puzzle #258 have only one solution?
Yes. Every puzzle in the 8x8 collection, including #258, 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 #258?
Start with the mint 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.