History of Queens

The eight queens problem (1848)

It all begins in 1848, when the German chess player Max Bezzel poses a question that became famous: can you place eight queens on a chessboard so that none attacks another? In chess, a queen sweeps its whole row, column and diagonals. The challenge is therefore to find an arrangement where the eight queens coexist in peace. The problem quickly fascinates mathematicians; mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss took an interest in the problem, and it is shown that there are ninety-two solutions on a classic board eight squares wide.

Generalized to a board of any size, it becomes the N queens problem, a computer science classic. It is used to teach recursion and backtracking, those methods where you try a path, then step back as soon as it leads to a dead end. This is already the spirit of Queens: place, eliminate, restart.

This link with computing is no anecdote. Even today, our version of Queens relies on a solver inspired by those very algorithms: each generated grid is tested to guarantee it has a single solution, exactly as one enumerates the solutions of the N queens problem. The legacy of 1848 is very much alive, in every game you launch.

The problem does not stop with Gauss: as early as 1850, mathematician Franz Nauck in turn publishes several complete solutions to the eight queens problem, helping spread it beyond the sole circle of chess players. From Bezzel to Gauss and then to Nauck, a puzzle born on a chessboard becomes, within a few years, a subject of study in its own right.

A piece chosen for its power

The choice of the queen is no accident. It is the most mobile piece on the chessboard: it moves as many squares as it likes, in a straight line, along a column or diagonally, which is what makes the problem hard to solve. An equivalent problem posed with rooks or bishops, more limited in their moves, would not carry the same complexity. It is this maximal constraint, inherited directly from chess, that Queens picks up today: a colored region replaces the diagonal, but the spirit stays the same, a powerful piece that must be isolated row after row, column after column.

The Star Battle of logic magazines

The pure queens problem is a mathematical exercise, not yet a game for the general public. The shift comes from puzzle magazines, which popularize a variant called Star Battle. Queens are replaced by stars, regions are drawn on the grid, and above all a gentler constraint is imposed: two stars only conflict if they touch, including diagonally, instead of attacking from afar.

These two additions, the regions and the contact rule, change everything. The puzzle becomes solvable by pure deduction rather than brute force, and each grid can aim for a single solution. This is exactly the mechanic you find today in Queens: one queen per row, per column, per region, with no contact.

This type of region-based grid does not stay confined to printed pages: it also fuels timed puzzle competitions. This double life, magazine and timed event, already sets the stage for the daily, shared format that LinkedIn would later popularize.

Wordle and the daily puzzle phenomenon

Queens' success is not explained by its mechanics alone: it fits within a broader wave. In 2021, the game Wordle, a word to guess in six tries, triggers a worldwide craze for daily puzzles online, to the point of being acquired by the New York Times in 2022. A single grid per day, the same for everyone, a result shareable in a few emojis: this format is as reassuring as it is habit-forming.

LinkedIn taps into that same dynamic by launching its suite of daily mini-games in 2024. Queens inherits from it directly: a single grid, published once a day, designed for a short break. The daily puzzle ritual, popularized by Wordle, became a full ingredient of Queens' success.

LinkedIn Queens and the web (2024)

In 2024, LinkedIn adds a handful of daily mini-games to its platform, in the wake of press puzzles that had gone viral. Queens is one of them. The professional network takes the Star Battle mechanic, dresses it in colored regions and publishes one grid a day, shared by everyone. The daily format and score sharing make it a ritual that spreads very fast.

Success calls for web versions like ours. The idea is not to replace LinkedIn's daily grid, but to extend it: unlimited grids, a progression mode from 6x6 to 9x9, a daily challenge with an archive, a weekly challenge and a leaderboard, all free and with no account. Max Bezzel's old problem, having passed through logic magazines and LinkedIn, is now played at will in a browser.

Queens is, in fact, just one of the daily mini-games LinkedIn launched during that period, alongside Tango and Pinpoint. Our web versions carry that same daily-puzzle spirit: find them, with all our other games, gathered on one hub.

Why this game appeals: pure deduction

What runs through nearly two centuries, from the 1848 chessboard to today's colored grids, is the same underlying appeal: the satisfaction of pure deduction. No cell is guessed at random, no luck steps in. Every decision follows logically from the one before, until the single possible arrangement appears.

It is also what makes the daily format effective: a short, fully masterable session that leaves a clean sense of accomplishment. The eight queens problem once required pen and paper, sometimes hours; Queens offers the same rigor, condensed into a few minutes, accessible to anyone who has never heard of Max Bezzel.

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