8x8 Queens Puzzle #265
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 #265
What follows is a complete solve of puzzle #265, 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 shadow, region confined to one line, last square in a region.
Show the full walkthrough (9 steps) — contains the solution
Step 1. Wherever indigo 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 2. Amber is down to 3 candidates in rows 1 and 2, columns 4 and 5, and they overlap enough to cover 3 squares elsewhere. Cross those out without deciding anything about amber itself.
Step 3. Indigo cannot leave column 7 — every one of its open squares (2 open squares) sits there. That column belongs to indigo, so every square in it owned by another colour is dead: 6 squares in all.
The board after step 3 — 0 of 8 queens placed. Step 4. All of the mint region's remaining squares (3 open squares) lie in column 8. Its queen therefore has to be somewhere in that column, which means no other colour may use it: 3 squares come off.
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: pale yellow has one square left, so its queen takes row 7, column 6; slate has one square left, so its queen takes row 5, column 5; amber has one square left, so its queen takes row 2, column 4; indigo has one square left, so its queen takes row 1, column 7. 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 7.
Step 6. The blue region has 3 squares left, spread across rows 3 and 4, columns 1 and 2. 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.
The board after step 6 — 4 of 8 queens placed. Step 7. Wherever red 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.
Step 8. Blue cannot leave row 3 — every one of its open squares (2 open squares) sits there. That row belongs to blue, so every square on it owned by another colour is dead: 1 square in all.
Step 9. 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 8; red has one square left, so its queen takes row 6, column 1; blue has one square left, so its queen takes row 3, column 2; khaki has one square left, so its queen takes row 8, column 3. 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 8, column 3.
The board after step 9 — 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 #265
Puzzle #265 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.
Like every board on this site, #265 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 #265 are: indigo (3 squares), amber (4 squares), pale yellow (4 squares), mint (6 squares), red (8 squares), slate (10 squares), khaki (13 squares), blue (16 squares). An even split would hand every color 8 squares, so the indigo region is running 5 squares under that average while the blue region is the roomiest area on the grid with 16 squares.
Every color takes one queen and one only, whatever its size — which is why the 13 square difference between indigo and blue is worth noting before you touch the grid. The cramped colors resolve first and hand you information; the roomy ones absorb whatever is left over at the end.
Square count is only half the story — how a color is arranged counts too. Indigo is the tidiest shape on #265, packing 75% of its 2×2 bounding box, whereas slate straggles across its 5×4 box at just 50%. 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 hard board.
Indigo covers 3 squares, spanning 2 rows and 2 columns (rows 1–2, columns 6–7).
Amber occupies 4 squares within rows 1–2, columns 4–6.
Pale yellow: 4 squares across rows 7–8, columns 6–8.
Mint covers 6 squares, spanning 5 rows and 2 columns (rows 1–5, columns 7–8).
Red occupies 8 squares within rows 4–7, columns 1–3.
Slate: 10 squares across rows 3–7, columns 5–8.
Khaki covers 13 squares, spanning 3 rows and 6 columns (rows 6–8, columns 1–6).
Blue occupies 16 squares within rows 1–5, columns 1–5.
Where to start on this board
Open on the tightest color. Here that is indigo, confined to 3 squares between rows 1 and 2 and columns 6 and 7. Its queen has nowhere else to go, which means those 2 rows and 2 columns carry more constraint than anywhere else on #265.
Indigo does not collapse onto a single line, so it will not hand you a queen on move one. What it does give you is a short list of 3 candidates. Take each one in turn, imagine the queen there, cross out its row, its column and the eight squares around it, and ask whether any other region is left with nowhere to go. One or two candidates usually fail that test immediately.
Work outward to the other flat regions next. Amber and pale yellow 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 #265
A quick way to find the next move is to count how many different colors touch each line. On this board, row 8 is the narrowest, touched by only 2 colors. Columns 1, 2, 3, 4 and 8 are the tightest columns, with 3 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 7 is the crowded extreme at 4 colors — worth revisiting later, not now.
Working through the middle game
Once two or three queens are down, the board changes character. Each queen removes an entire row, an entire column and the ring of up to eight squares around it, so the grid shrinks faster than most people expect. The habit that pays here is marking rather than remembering: after every placement, cross out the full row, the full column and all eight neighbours before hunting for the next move.
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.
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 #265 is rated hard
The hard label comes out of four measurable things about #265: it has no region locked to one row or column, its smallest color spans 3 squares, its least crowded row meets 2 colors, and its largest and smallest regions differ by 13. Boards that score tight on those measures give up their first queen fast.
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.
If #265 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.
There is one technique that repays study at every grid size. Two regions restricted to the same two rows must occupy one row apiece, which excludes all other regions from those rows entirely; the identical logic applies to columns and to larger matched sets. It converts slow boards into fast ones, and the likeliest place to find it on #265 is row 8.
A non-spoiling distribution check: solved, #265 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 #265?
Puzzle #265 is rated hard. Its smallest color region holds 3 squares, its tightest row is touched by 2 colors, and no region is confined to a single row or column, so the opening move takes some hunting.
Does 8x8 puzzle #265 have only one solution?
Yes. Every puzzle in the 8x8 collection, including #265, 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 #265?
Start with the indigo region — the most constrained color on this board, with 3 squares spanning rows 1–2 and columns 6–7. Narrowing the smallest region first removes the most squares elsewhere on the grid.