8x8 Queens Puzzle #297
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 10-step reasoning is written out below.
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Step-by-step solution for puzzle #297
What follows is a complete solve of puzzle #297, worked the way a person works it rather than the way a computer does. It runs to 10 deductions — 8 queen placements and 2 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 (10 steps) — contains the solution
Step 1. Only row 1, column 8 is still open in indigo, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. That clears row 1, column 8, the rest of the indigo region and every square adjacent to it — diagonals included.
Step 2. The red region is down to one open square, at row 6, column 7. Every colour holds exactly one queen, so that square is forced. Cross out the whole of row 6 and column 7, the remaining red squares, and the ring of neighbours around row 6, column 7.
Step 3. Only row 2, column 6 is still open in amber, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. Everything else in row 2, in column 6, in amber and in the ring around that square is now dead.
The board after step 3 — 3 of 8 queens placed. Step 4. All of the blue region's remaining squares (2 open squares) lie in row 3. Its queen therefore has to be somewhere on that row, which means no other colour may use it: 4 squares come off.
Step 5. Only row 5, column 1 is still open in slate, and since each colour must take a queen, that settles it. That clears row 5, column 1, the rest of the slate region and every square adjacent to it — diagonals included.
Step 6. The blue region is down to one open square, at row 3, column 2. Every colour holds exactly one queen, so that square is forced. Cross out the whole of row 3 and column 2, the remaining blue squares, and the ring of neighbours around row 3, column 2.
Step 7. Pale yellow cannot leave column 3 — 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: 2 squares in all.
The board after step 7 — 5 of 8 queens placed. Step 8. The khaki region is down to one open square, at row 8, column 5. Every colour holds exactly one queen, so that square is forced. Row 8 and column 5 are now spoken for, along with the squares touching that queen.
Step 9. 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 10. The pale yellow region is down to one open square, at row 7, column 3. Every colour holds exactly one queen, so that square is forced. Cross out the whole of row 7 and column 3, the remaining pale yellow squares, and the ring of neighbours around row 7, column 3.
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 #297
Puzzle #297 is one of the easy-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.
There is exactly one way to finish #297, 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 #297 are: indigo (1 square), slate (3 squares), blue (5 squares), red (6 squares), khaki (7 squares), amber (8 squares), pale yellow (8 squares), mint (26 squares). An even split would hand every color 8 squares, so the indigo region is running 7 squares under that average while the mint region is the roomiest area on the grid with 26 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 indigo, with 1 square, is under far more pressure than mint with 26. A 25-square gap like this one rewards players who start where the choices are fewest.
Look at arrangement as well as area. Indigo is the densest region on this grid at 100% of a 1×1 frame; khaki is the loosest, occupying only 58% of its 3×4 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 #297, smallest first. Reading these spans before you place anything is the quickest way to see which parts of the grid are genuinely contested.
Indigo: 1 square across rows 1–1, columns 8–8. It never leaves row 1, so its queen is locked to that row.
Slate covers 3 squares, spanning 3 rows and 1 column (rows 4–6, columns 1–1). It sits wholly inside column 1, so its queen must be in that column.
Blue occupies 5 squares within rows 1–3, columns 1–2.
Red: 6 squares across rows 4–8, columns 7–8.
Khaki covers 7 squares, spanning 3 rows and 4 columns (rows 6–8, columns 4–7).
Amber occupies 8 squares within rows 1–3, columns 5–8.
Pale yellow: 8 squares across rows 6–8, columns 1–3.
Mint covers 26 squares, spanning 7 rows and 6 columns (rows 1–7, columns 2–7).
Where to start on this board
Open on the tightest color. Here that is indigo, confined to 1 square between rows 1 and 1 and columns 8 and 8. Its queen has nowhere else to go, which means those 1 row and 1 column carry more constraint than anywhere else on #297.
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.
No region here is pinned to a shallow band of rows, so turn the same idea sideways: blue and red span only two columns. Two narrow regions sharing the same two columns take one column each and lock everyone else out of both, which is usually enough to crack a board that offers no free opening.
The tightest lines on puzzle #297
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 and 8 are the narrowest, touched by only 3 colors. Columns 3 and 4 are the tightest columns, with 2 colors.
The fewer colors a line touches, the sooner it surrenders its queen. A row meeting just 3 colors has to be claimed by one of them, which pushes every remaining region into the other 7 rows. Row 6, meeting 5 colors, is the opposite case — the busiest line on #297 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.
Two checks, run alternately, will carry you through the 64 squares of this grid. First: has any of the eight regions been reduced to a single open square? Second: has any row or column? Either answer forces a queen. Players who stall on 8x8 boards almost always run one of those checks and forget the other.
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 #297 is rated easy
The rating reflects how much the board concedes up front. Puzzle #297 has three 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 25 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 #297 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.
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 #297, start hunting for it near column 3.
Here is a shape check that gives nothing away: when #297 is solved, 3 queens sit on the outer edge of the grid and 5 sit inside it, with 1 queen 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 #297?
Puzzle #297 is rated easy. Its smallest color region holds 1 square, its tightest row is touched by 3 colors, and three of its regions are confined to a single row or column, which gives you a forced move early.
Does 8x8 puzzle #297 have only one solution?
Yes. Every puzzle in the 8x8 collection, including #297, 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 #297?
Start with the indigo region — the most constrained color on this board, with 1 square spanning rows 1–1 and columns 8–8. Narrowing the smallest region first removes the most squares elsewhere on the grid.