Queens Puzzle: Free Region-Logic Alternatives to LinkedIn Queens

LinkedIn's Queens turned a decades-old computer-science exercise — the N-queens problem — into one of the most talked-about daily puzzles of the year. One crown in every row, every column, every colored region, with no two crowns touching, not even diagonally. It's simple to explain and genuinely hard to hold in your head, which is exactly why it spread so fast. If you want to play it without a LinkedIn account, or you've simply run out of patience waiting for tomorrow's board, here's the Queens puzzle genre explained, plus a free daily alternative.

Why the adjacency rule is the actual puzzle

Place one crown per row and column and you've solved ordinary N-queens — a puzzle with thousands of valid answers on a normal-sized board. Queens adds two constraints that collapse that huge solution space down to exactly one: every crown must also claim its own colored region, and no two crowns can occupy touching cells, including diagonals. The region shapes do almost all the work. A region confined to a single row or column tells you immediately where its crown has to go, and that single deduction usually cascades through half the board.

1. Queens — our daily region-logic puzzle

Queens is a free, from-scratch region-logic puzzle with the same core rule set as LinkedIn's version: one crown per row, column and colored region, no two touching. Every board is generated and then run through a solver that confirms exactly one arrangement satisfies every rule before it's ever shown to a player — so you're never fighting an ambiguous puzzle.

What you get beyond the original: no account required, a 7×7 board for free with a tougher 9×9 for Pro, unlimited practice mode, a solve timer, and a leaderboard.

2. Tango — the other half of the LinkedIn set

If Queens is your kind of puzzle, Tango is its natural companion: balance a grid of suns and moons so every row and column stays even and no three of the same symbol sit in a row, with "=" and "×" hints steering your deductions. Same publisher, same daily habit, different constraint logic entirely.

3. Sudoku — the constraint-logic classic

Sudoku is the puzzle every region-logic game is ultimately descended from: fill a grid so no row, column or box repeats a digit. If you like Queens for the "which cell is the only legal spot" feeling, Sudoku scratches the same itch at a larger scale — start with our Sudoku solving techniques for beginners.

4. Domino Regions — constraint logic with a twist

Domino Regions swaps crowns for dominoes: fill colored regions so every sum, equality and comparison constraint holds at once. It's a different mechanic with the same "read the region, not the cell" instinct that makes Queens click. More in our domino puzzle games guide.

5. Knot — logic without any grid at all

Knot drops the grid entirely: drag points until no two connecting lines cross. If what you actually love about Queens is the moment a tangled board suddenly resolves, Knot gives you that same payoff in pure spatial form.

How to solve a Queens board faster

1. 1Start with the smallest region. Fewer cells means fewer legal spots for its crown, often just one once other regions have ruled cells out.
2. 2Mark, don't guess. X out every cell a placed or implied crown rules out — its row, column, and every diagonally touching cell.
3. 3Watch for a region confined to one line. If every cell of a region shares a row or column, that region's crown must land there, which rules every other region out of that line entirely.