How to Play the Queens Puzzle

By Puzzledoku · Published October 8, 2026 · Last updated October 9, 2026

The Queens puzzle takes a minute to learn and a long time to master. Here are the rules, the controls in Puppy Hideout, and the techniques that will take you from your first board to the hardest 10×10 levels.

The three rules

The board is a square grid split into colored regions. There are as many regions as there are rows: an 8×8 board has eight colors and hides eight puppies. Place the puppies so that:

• One pup per colorEach colored region has exactly one puppy.
• One per row and columnEach row and each column has exactly one puppy.
• Pups never touchNo two puppies are neighbors, not even diagonally.

Every playable level and daily puzzle on Puzzledoku has exactly one solution, and you can always reach it with logic. You never need to guess.

How this differs from traditional N-Queens: a chess queen attacks along an entire diagonal. In this puzzle, only neighboring diagonal cells are forbidden, so two puppies may share a longer diagonal when they do not touch. Colored regions add the extra rule of exactly one puppy per color. The small board above illustrates these rules.

Controls

You have three bones per puzzle. A wrong guess costs one. With Auto X turned on in Settings, finding a puppy crosses out its row, column, color and neighbors for you.

Items

• Hint explains the next logical step in plain words and highlights the cells it talks about.
• Sniff sends a puppy to cross out a few cells that are definitely empty.
• Fetch brings back one hidden puppy, usually the hardest one to spot.

You earn more items by clearing levels, and you can grab a free one when you run out.

Solving techniques

1. Clear around every puppy

Once a puppy is found, nothing else can share its row, its column or its color, and the eight cells around it must be empty. Cross them all out. This is the most common move in the game, and Auto X does it for you.

2. Only one cell left

If a row, a column or a color region has just one cell left that is not crossed out, the puppy must be there. Small regions and the edges of the board are the best places to look for these.

3. A color locked into one line

If every open cell of a color sits in the same row, that row’s puppy must belong to that color. So every cell of a different color in that row can be crossed out. The same works for columns, and in reverse: if every open cell of a row lies inside one color, the rest of that color can be crossed out.

Worked example: purple reserves the first row

Rows are counted from top to bottom and columns from left to right, starting at 1. Circles show the candidates discussed in each example; X marks show the new eliminations.

1. Find the candidates. This purple region has only two cells: row 1, column 5 and row 1, column 6. Both are circled on the left board.
2. Reserve the row. Purple needs one puppy. Either choice puts that puppy in row 1, so that row is already reserved for purple.
3. Eliminate the other colors. Cross out row 1, columns 1–4 and 7–8. You can make these six eliminations before deciding which purple cell holds the puppy.

4. Wherever the puppy goes

Look at the few cells where a region’s puppy could still go. If some other cell would touch, or share a row or column with, every one of those options, that cell can never hold a puppy. A two-cell region often wipes out the cells next to both of its cells this way.

5. Groups that fill up lines

When two colors can only use two rows, those two rows are full: their puppies must come from those two colors, so every other cell in those rows is empty. The idea scales up to three or four colors and works with columns too. It is the key to most of the harder 10×10 levels.

Worked example: purple and red reserve two rows

1. Find both regions. Purple can use row 5, column 5 or row 6, column 5. Red can use row 5, column 2 or row 6, column 2. The four candidates are circled.
2. Count puppies and rows. These two regions need two puppies, and both can only use rows 5 and 6. They cannot both use the same row, so together they must fill both rows.
3. Eliminate the other colors. In rows 5 and 6, cross out columns 1, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8. All twelve cells are empty, even though you have not yet decided which row belongs to purple.

Neither deduction needs a guess or reveals the whole answer. Try looking for the same patterns when you play a Queens puzzle.

6. “What if?”

On the toughest boards, pick a cell and imagine a puppy there. Follow the rules: which cells does it rule out, and where must the next puppies go? If you reach a row, column or color with no room left, or two puppies that clash, the first cell must be empty. Keep these chains short. The Hint item will walk you through one step by step.

Common mistakes to catch early

• Using the chess diagonal rule. Only touching diagonal neighbors are forbidden. Do not cross out distant cells solely because they share a diagonal.
• Checking only rows and columns. Each color needs its own puppy too. Two puppies in separated cells of the same color still break the rule.
• Choosing a cell as soon as a color reserves a line. A reservation tells you which other cells are empty. It does not necessarily tell you which candidate contains the puppy.
• Building on an unproven X. A manual mark is not a confirmed deduction. Clear uncertain marks before declaring that a group has a single candidate.

For a repeatable order to apply these techniques, use the Queens strategy guide. It follows three verified moves on a real daily board.

Ready to play?