How to Play LinkedIn Queens

Rules

• Place exactly one queen in each row.
• Place exactly one queen in each column.
• Place exactly one queen in each color region.
• No two queens may touch, not even diagonally.

How the game works

The board is a square grid divided into colored regions, with as many regions as there are rows. In the game you can mark cells you have ruled out with an X and place a queen when you are certain. The puzzle is solved the moment every row, column and region holds exactly one queen and no queens touch.

Beginner strategy

• Start with the smallest region. A region with only one or two cells leaves almost no choice.
• Look for a region that sits entirely inside one row or column. That line’s queen must be in the region, so mark every other cell of the line with an X.
• Every time you place a queen, cross out its row, its column, its region and the eight cells around it.
• If a row, column or region is down to one open cell, the queen goes there.

Common mistakes

• Forgetting that queens cannot touch diagonally.
• Guessing early instead of ruling cells out.
• Not updating your X marks after placing a queen, which hides the next forced move.

Example

In this small 4×4 example, region d only covers two cells, both in column 1, so column 1’s queen must be in region d. That rules out the rest of column 1, and the other queens follow: one per row, column and region, with none touching.