LinkedIn Queens Solver: How to Beat the Puzzle Fast

Understand what you're actually solving

LinkedIn Queens hands you an N×N grid divided into N colored regions, and asks you to place exactly one queen in every row, every column, and every region — all three conditions have to hold at once. On top of that, no two queens can touch, not even diagonally, so a queen at row 3, column 4 rules out all eight neighboring cells as well as blocking that row, column, and region for every other queen. Most of the puzzle's difficulty comes from that layered set of restrictions rather than from the grid being large: even a 7×7 or 8×8 board usually has a clean logical path if you attack it in the right order.

Start with the smallest regions

Before doing anything else, scan the board for the region with the fewest cells. A region with only two or three cells gives you the least room to be wrong, and every queen you can place with confidence early shrinks the search space for everything else. If a region has exactly one cell, that cell must hold the queen — place it immediately and cross out its row, column, and the eight touching cells. If a region has two or three cells, check whether they share a row or column; if they do, you already know the queen falls somewhere along that line, which narrows every other region that crosses it.

Look for regions trapped in a single row or column

A region confined entirely to one row means that row's queen must come from that region, so every other cell in that row can be crossed out immediately, even in regions that also appear elsewhere on the board. The same logic works in reverse for a region confined to one column. This single technique often does more work than any other early step, because clearing an entire row or column removes candidate cells from several regions at once, sometimes forcing a second placement right away.

Use pigeonhole logic across groups of regions

Sometimes no single region is confined to one line, but a group of regions is confined together. If three regions only ever appear inside three specific rows, then between them those three rows must supply exactly three queens, and every cell those regions have in other rows can be eliminated, since a queen from one of those regions has to land in that trio of rows. This is the same pigeonhole reasoning used in Sudoku's naked pairs and triples: count how many regions are boxed into how many lines, and if the numbers match, you can clear the surrounding cells.

Let the no-touching rule eliminate cells

Every time you place a queen, don't stop at crossing out its row, column, and region. Cross out the diagonal neighbors too — the cells immediately up-left, up-right, down-left, and down-right. This matters most near the edges of small regions, where a single diagonal elimination can leave a region with only one legal cell left, effectively creating a new forced queen without any further counting.

Mark your X's as you go

Treat elimination as an active step, not a mental note. Put a visible X in any cell you've ruled out — same row as a placed queen, same column, same region, or diagonally adjacent — before you look for the next placement. Puzzles that feel stuck are almost always puzzles where an elimination got missed rather than ones that need a genuinely new idea. A region with four cells looks open until you notice that three of them were already crossed out by earlier queens, leaving one forced cell you'd otherwise have overlooked.

A walkthrough: how the first queen usually falls

Picture a 7×7 board where one region is shaped like a narrow strip running down a single column, occupying five cells in that column and nothing else. That region's queen has to be in that column, so cross out the rest of the column in every other region. Now check the rows those five cells sit in — if a second region only touches that column at one of those five rows, it can't be the source of the queen there without conflicting with the first region, so eliminate that overlap. Once one or two regions are trimmed down to a single remaining cell, place those queens, apply the touching rule, and reevaluate every region again. Most boards yield their first placement within the first two or three passes of this cycle, and each confirmed queen makes the remaining regions easier to pin down.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Skipping the touching rule and only tracking rows, columns, and regions.
• Guessing when a region still has three or four open cells instead of finding the forced move elsewhere on the board.
• Forgetting to recheck earlier regions after a new queen changes what's still legal there.

Working through the board methodically — smallest regions first, then confined lines, then pigeonhole groups — turns Queens from a guessing game into a puzzle you can solve the same logical way every time.

Keep practicing

Ready to put these techniques to work? Try today's puzzle with our Queens solver, or head to the daily Queens page to see the current grid. You can also check today's LinkedIn games answers for the full lineup.