Tips and Strategies
You know the rules. You can solve beginner puzzles. But larger grids keep tripping you up, or your times aren't coming down. Here's what actually helps.
Work from constraints, not possibilities
Don't try to guess where queens go. Instead, figure out where they can't go. Mark eliminated cells aggressively. The queens will reveal themselves through the process of elimination.
Process the most constrained first
Look for the row, column, or region with the fewest remaining options. If a region has only two valid cells, focus there. Small regions, edge regions, and regions squeezed between placed queens are your best starting points.
Think about adjacency early
The no-touching rule is the most constraining part of the puzzle. Placing a queen eliminates up to eight cells. On a 5x5 grid, that's a huge portion of the board. Visualise the exclusion zone before you place — the cascade of eliminations often solves nearby regions immediately.
Use the marks
Tap past queen to mark a cell as excluded. This is not just bookkeeping — it's your primary solving tool. Mark every cell you've ruled out. The visual clarity makes patterns obvious that were invisible before.
When you're stuck, zoom out
If you've been staring at one region, look at the whole grid. Sometimes the key insight is that a row or column only has one valid cell across all its intersecting regions. The global view often breaks local deadlocks.
Speed comes from pattern recognition
The more puzzles you solve, the faster you recognise common configurations. A region with cells in only one row? Queen goes there without thinking. Two adjacent regions sharing a border? Their queens must be separated. These patterns become automatic with practice.
Put it into practice
The daily challenges are great for building speed — fresh puzzles every day, same puzzles worldwide.
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