Crown Grid – Free Queens Puzzle Online

What is Crown Grid?

Crown Grid is a free queens puzzle online. The board is split into colour areas. You place one crown in every row, every column and every colour. Two crowns may never touch, not even at the corners. Each level has exactly one correct answer, so you never need to guess.

This kind of puzzle comes from a logic genre called Star Battle. It became hugely popular again as a daily "queens" game. Crown Grid is our own version, with 60 levels from 5×5 to 9×9 and a daily puzzle.

Queens puzzle rules

• Put exactly one crown in each row.
• Put exactly one crown in each column.
• Put exactly one crown in each colour area.
• Crowns must not touch each other – not side by side and not diagonally.
• A board of size N×N always needs N crowns. When all are placed correctly, you win.

How to use the buttons

• Tap a square once for ✕ (“no crown here”), twice for 👑, three times to clear it.
• Drag from an empty square to mark many ✕ in one move.
• ↩ Undo takes back your last move. 🗑 Clear empties the board.
• 💡 Hint removes a wrong crown, or places one correct crown.
• ✕ Auto: when it is on, every new crown marks its row, column, colour and neighbours with ✕ for you.
• 🎯 Levels / 📅 Daily: play the 60 levels in order, or the puzzle of the day.
• Keyboard: click the board, then use the arrow keys, Space to cycle, Q for a crown, X for a mark, U to undo and H for a hint.

Crowns that break a rule get red stripes, so you see mistakes at once. Your solved levels and best times are saved on this device.

What Crown Grid does for your mind

• Logic: every move follows from a reason: “this colour only fits in row 3, so row 3 is taken”.
• Focus: you must keep four rules in your head at the same time.
• Planning: good players look a few steps ahead before they place a crown.
• Spatial thinking: you learn to see shapes, areas and lines on a grid quickly.
• Patience: big 9×9 boards reward slow, careful steps more than fast guesses.
• A calm break: one small board takes a few minutes – a good pause from screens full of news.
• A sense of achievement: the board only “clicks” when everything is right.

What science says, honestly. There is no study on Crown Grid or on queens puzzles in particular. The best-known research on puzzles in general comes from the University of Exeter and King's College London. In 2019 they reported on more than 19,000 people aged 50 and over in the online PROTECT study. People who did word and number puzzles more often scored better on tests of attention, reasoning and memory. But this is a link, not proof: the researchers said they cannot say that puzzles reduce the risk of dementia. Play because it is fun – not as a medicine.

Who is it for?

• Beginners and children: start with the 5×5 levels. The rules are simple and the boards are small.
• Daily players: the 📅 Daily tab gives you one puzzle for each day – a nice morning habit, like the Daily Sudoku.
• Experts: try the 9×9 levels without hints and beat your best time.
• Older players: big squares, clear colours, no time pressure and no sound.

Tips to solve queens puzzles faster

1. Start with the smallest colour. A colour with only 1–3 squares has very few choices.
2. Look for a colour in one line. If a colour sits fully inside one row, that row belongs to it. Mark ✕ on all other squares of that row.
3. Count groups. If two colours fit only inside the same two rows, no other colour can use those rows.
4. Use the neighbours rule. If every free square of a colour touches the same outside square, that outside square can never hold a crown.
5. Mark ✕ generously. Most of the work is marking where crowns cannot go. Drag to mark fast.
6. Test, then undo. Stuck? Place a test crown. If some colour has no space left, the test was wrong – undo and mark ✕ there.
7. Print and practise. Our free printable queens puzzle PDF has six boards with answers.

A short history

The rules come from Star Battle, a puzzle type created by the Dutch puzzle maker Hans Eendebak for the 2003 World Puzzle Championship in Arnhem. Classic Star Battle puzzles often ask for two stars in each row, column and area on a 10×10 board. It probably grew out of an older puzzle called “Cattle” by Tim Peeters.

In May 2024 LinkedIn added a one-crown version called Queens to its daily games. It turned an old contest puzzle into a daily habit; LinkedIn says millions of professionals play its games every day. In October 2026 that daily series passed puzzle number 900.

Fun fact: the name “queens” comes from chess – a chess queen attacks along rows and columns, so a famous old problem asks how to put eight queens on a chessboard without attacks. Crown Grid adds colours and the “no touching” rule.

Questions people ask

More logic games and guides

Sources

• Grandmaster Puzzles – Star Battle rules and info
• Puzzles Wiki – Star Battle
• FOX 10 – LinkedIn adds 3 games (May 2024)
• FandomWire – LinkedIn games list, 17 Oct 2026
• ScienceDaily – Puzzles and brain function in over-50s (2019)

Crown Grid is an independent game by SepoGames and is not connected to LinkedIn. This page is for fun and general information, not medical advice.