Catnap · tips
Queens puzzle tips & solving techniques
Every Catnap board is built to be solved by pure deduction — no guessing, ever. These are the exact techniques the puzzle is graded against, cheapest first. Learn them in order and your solve times drop.
1. Paw out before you place
The single biggest time-saver: when you place a cat, immediately mark a paw print (✕) on every cell it rules out — its whole row, its whole column, its whole color region, and all eight neighboring cells. Most "stuck" boards are just boards where you stopped marking. Clear the board of impossibilities and the cats reveal themselves.
2. Forced singles
Scan every row, column, and color region. If any of them has only one open cell left, that cell must be a cat — place it, then paw out its lines. New singles usually cascade out of the one you just placed.
3. Color confinement
Look at each color region's open cells. If they all sit in a single row or column, then that region's cat must live on that line — which means no other color can. Paw out every other open cell on that row or column. This is the technique that unlocks most mid-game boards.
4. Attack-all elimination
Pick a row, column, or region with a few candidates left. If every one of those candidates would attack the same empty square — same line, adjacent, or same color — then a cat there is impossible no matter which candidate turns out to be the cat. Paw that square out even though you haven't placed anything yet.
5. Region subsets
The hardest boards hide a pairing: if k color regions can only fit inside the same k rows (or columns), those lines are spoken for by those colors. Any other region's candidates sitting in those lines can be pawed out. Spotting a 2-region subset is the difference between a fast solve and a stall.
Put it together
Work the list top-down: place forced singles, then confinement, then attack-all, then subsets — and after every placement, paw out the lines. If you ever feel like you'd have to guess, you've missed an elimination, not run out of logic. New to the rules? Start with how to play Queens.
Practice on today's board →