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LinkedIn Queens and Star Battle: Same Rules, More Puzzles

LinkedIn's Queens follows the rules of one-star Star Battle. Where both came from, the eight queens problem behind the name, and how Queens skills carry over.

By , maker of Puzzle Picnic · · 8 min read

LinkedIn's Queens is a one-star Star Battle puzzle. You place one crown in every row, every column and every coloured region, and no two crowns may touch, not even diagonally. Star Battle has exactly those rules with stars instead of crowns. It was created for the 2003 World Puzzle Championship, two decades before LinkedIn's version, so if you enjoy Queens there is a large supply of the same puzzle elsewhere, at more sizes and difficulty levels.

This post is for Queens players curious about where the game came from and what to play next. It covers the rules side by side, the history of both puzzles and the chess problem behind the name, a small puzzle solved step by step, and how each Queens habit maps onto a named Star Battle technique.

The rules of Queens and Star Battle, side by side

Queens and one-star Star Battle share every rule that affects the solve; only the symbol differs. The table adds the New York Times' two-star version for comparison.

LinkedIn QueensStars in Puzzle PicnicTwo Not Touch (New York Times)
PieceCrownStarStar
Per row and columnOneOneTwo
Per regionOneOneTwo
Pieces may touchNever, not even at a cornerNever, not even at a cornerNever, not even at a corner

News coverage at launch described the goal of Queens as placing one queen "in each row, column, and color region" with no queens touching each other (FOX 35, May 2024). Grandmaster Puzzles, whose founder supplied the first Queens puzzles, describes Queens as "a simplified version of Star Battle with puzzles with just one 'crown' per row/column/region".

Star Battle itself is a family. The general rule, as Grandmaster Puzzles writes it, is to place stars so that "each row, column, and bold region contains the indicated number of stars", and stars "cannot be placed in adjacent cells that share an edge or corner". Krazydad lists the common formats as one-star 8x8, two-star 10x10 and three-star 14x14. Queens is the one-star member, and so is Stars in Puzzle Picnic.

Where Queens and Star Battle came from

Star Battle is the older of the two by more than twenty years. Grandmaster Puzzles credits it to Hans Eendebak, who created it for the 2003 World Puzzle Championship in Arnhem, the Netherlands. It likely grew out of an earlier puzzle called Cattle by Tim Peeters, which already had regions and a no-touch rule but used outside clues for rows and columns.

Queens arrived on 1 May 2024. TechCrunch reported that LinkedIn launched three logic games that day, Queens, Pinpoint and Crossclimb, developed by its LinkedIn News team. Like Wordle, each could be played once a day, with company leaderboards and scores you could share with connections. Two weeks later Grandmaster Puzzles noted that Thomas Snyder, World Sudoku Champion in 2007, 2008 and 2011 and known as Dr. Sudoku, "has been providing the initial puzzles" for Queens, and from September to November 2024 the site published a weekly bonus puzzle titled "Star Battle (also known as Queens)".

The same team helped design or edit LinkedIn's later logic games. When LinkedIn added Zip in March 2025, Grandmaster Puzzles described it as "their third logic game alongside Queens and Tango where we've helped design/edit the puzzles". Zip is a one-line path puzzle with the same rules as Trail; Hidato, Numbrix and Trail compared covers that family.

The eight queens problem behind the name

The name echoes a classic chess puzzle: place eight queens on a chessboard so that no two attack each other. Max Bezzel published it in 1848, Franz Nauck gave the first solutions in 1850 and generalised it to any board size, and Carl Friedrich Gauss is among the mathematicians who worked on it. It has 92 solutions, which reduce to 12 essentially different ones once you count rotations and reflections as the same.

One of the 92 solutions to the eight queens problem, with each queen shown as a star. No two share a row, a column or any diagonal, so no two touch either: every eight queens solution is also a legal Queens placement if you ignore the colours.

The chess version is stricter about diagonals. A chess queen attacks along the whole diagonal, so no two queens may share one anywhere on the board. In LinkedIn's Queens and in Star Battle, only touching is forbidden. Two crowns may sit on the same long diagonal as long as at least one square lies between them.

Part of a grid. Two stars on the same diagonal, two squares apart. In the eight queens problem these queens would attack each other; in Queens and Star Battle they are fine. Only the middle square, which touches both, must stay empty.

What Queens adds is the regions. On an empty 8x8 board the eight queens problem has 92 answers. The coloured regions are what turn the placement into a puzzle with a single answer to work out by deduction.

A 5x5 Queens-style puzzle, solved

The small puzzle below follows Queens rules on a 5x5 grid with five regions, labelled A to E because the diagrams have no colours. It has exactly one solution. Squares are named by row and column from the top left, so r2c3 is row 2, column 3. In the diagrams * is a crown and x a square marked empty.

The starting grid. Each letter is a region. A is a two-square domino in the top row, D runs down the right-hand column, and B is two squares at the top left.
  1. A colour stuck in one row. Region A (r1c4, r1c5) lies entirely in row 1, so row 1's crown is A's. Mark r1c1, r1c2 and r1c3 empty.
  2. A colour with one square left. Region B had r1c1 and r2c1; r1c1 is gone, so B's crown is r2c1. Cross out the rest of row 2, the rest of column 1, and its neighbour r3c2.
  3. A colour stuck in one column. Region D lies entirely in column 5, so column 5's crown is D's and r1c5 is empty. That leaves region A only r1c4. Place it, then cross out column 4 below it.
After the first three steps. Two crowns are placed. Region C has one open square left, r3c3.
  1. Region C now has a single open square, r3c3, so the crown goes there. It rules out r3c5 in its row, r4c3 and r5c3 in its column, and its neighbours r4c2 and r4c4.
  2. Row 4 has one open square left, r4c5. Crown it, and r5c5 goes.
  3. Row 5 has one open square left, r5c2, in region E. That is the last crown.
The solution. One crown in each row, column and region, and none touching.

Every move was one of two kinds: a colour, row or column with one square left, or a colour that fits inside one line. Those two ideas go a long way in Queens and on small Star Battle grids.

Queens habits and their Star Battle names

Everything you do in Queens already has a name in Star Battle guides. Knowing the names helps when you read strategy pages written for Star Battle.

What you do in QueensStar Battle nameWhere to read more
Put a crown in a one-square colourSingle, or forced placementHow to play Star Battle
X the eight squares around a crownNeighbours, or the no-touch haloStar Battle mistakes
A colour that sits in one row empties the rest of that rowRegion confined to a lineRegion logic
X a square that touches every square of a small colourSqueeze, or neighbourhood eliminationRegion logic
Two colours inside two rows empty the rest of those rowsN in N, or region countingStar Battle strategies

The last row is easy to use for months without ever naming it. It is also the technique that does the most work on bigger grids, so it is worth practising on purpose.

What changes when you move to Star Battle

Moving from Queens to Star Battle changes how you practise more than how you solve. A daily game gives you one grid a day at a size and difficulty you do not choose. Star Battle collections let you pick both, which is how you get better at the steps you find hard.

Three things to expect:

  • Bigger grids. Every extra row adds a region, and on larger grids the counting techniques start to matter more than single regions. Krazydad names one-star 8x8 as a common format.
  • Two-star puzzles. Many classic Star Battle puzzles, including the New York Times' Two Not Touch, ask for two stars in every row, column and region. The no-touch rule is the same, but a domino can no longer hold a region's stars, and counting gets harder. Try them once one-star feels easy.
  • Outlines instead of colours. Printed puzzles mark regions with thick borders. It takes a few grids to read them as quickly as colours.

In Puzzle Picnic the game is called Stars and follows the same one-star rules as Queens. It has four levels, Easy 6x6, Medium 7x7, Hard 8x8 and Expert 9x9, and Expert puzzles need the region-group counting from the table above (Hard ones may). You tap a square once to mark it empty and twice for a star, and two stars that break a rule turn red.

Where to play more one-star puzzles

There are several good places to play the Queens rules beyond LinkedIn:

  • Stars in Puzzle Picnic, on iPhone, Android and the web, at four levels and as many grids as you like. Every puzzle has one solution you can reach by logic, and Stars takes its turn as the app's shared daily puzzle, which rotates through its six games. Play it at puzzlepicnic.app/stars.
  • Grandmaster Puzzles, where Thomas Snyder published weekly one-star "Star Battle (also known as Queens)" puzzles in autumn 2024, alongside the site's regular Star Battle puzzles.
  • Krazydad, which publishes Star Battle and Two Not Touch puzzles together with the solving tutorials cited in this post.

If you like the idea of one shared puzzle a day, daily puzzles after Wordle looks at other logic games that work the same way.

Frequently asked questions

Is LinkedIn Queens the same as Star Battle?

Queens uses the rules of one-star Star Battle: one piece per row, column and region, and no two pieces touching, even diagonally. The puzzle designers who supplied LinkedIn's first Queens puzzles describe it as a simplified, one-star version of Star Battle. Star Battle also comes in two- and three-star versions, which Queens does not use.

Why is it called Queens if the crowns don't attack like chess queens?

The name echoes the eight queens problem, a chess puzzle from 1848 about placing queens so that none attack each other. Queens keeps the idea of one piece per row and column but swaps the long diagonal attack for a simpler rule: pieces may not touch. The coloured regions are what give each grid its single intended answer.

Can two crowns share a diagonal in Queens?

Yes, as long as they do not touch. The rule only forbids crowns in neighbouring squares, including corner to corner. Two crowns on the same diagonal with at least one square between them are allowed in Queens and in Star Battle.

Are Queens strategies the same as Star Battle strategies?

Yes. Every Queens technique, from filling a one-square colour to counting two colours inside two rows, is a standard Star Battle technique. Star Battle guides simply give them names and add the counting methods needed for larger grids and two-star puzzles.

Where to go next

If Queens is your daily habit, Star Battle is the same puzzle with the volume turned up: more sizes, more levels and as many grids as you want. Start with how to play Star Battle to see the rules written the Star Battle way, then work through the Star Battle strategies guide for the counting techniques that bigger grids need. When you want to read about the puzzle's own history, where Star Battle came from goes further back than this post does.

Sources