Crowns

Crowns is a calm logic puzzle you can finish over a cup of chai. The board is a square grid split into coloured regions, with as many regions as there are rows. Your job is to place one crown in every row, one in every column and one in every colour. There is one more rule that makes it interesting: no two crowns may touch, not even at a corner. Every puzzle has exactly one answer, and you can always reach it by reasoning, never by guessing.

How to play

• Tap a cell once to mark it with a ✕, meaning "no crown here". Tap again to place a crown, and once more to clear the cell.
• Drag across empty cells to cross out a whole row or column in one stroke. Dragging from a ✕ wipes ✕s away again.
• With Auto-✕ on, each crown greys out the cells it rules out: its row, its column, its colour and the eight cells around it.
• Two crowns that break a rule turn red straight away, so mistakes never hide. Undo and Clear are always there.

How to start

Look for the smallest regions first. A colour with only two or three cells has very few places for its crown, and a single-cell region gives you a crown for free. Then look for a colour that sits entirely inside one row or one column: its crown must be in that line, so every other cell of that row or column gets a ✕.

Solving techniques

Last cell standing. When a row, column or colour has only one open cell left, the crown goes there. Pairs. If two colours both fit only in rows 3 and 4, those two rows belong to them, so cross out every other cell in rows 3 and 4. The same works with columns, and with three colours in three lines. Look before you leap. Imagine a crown on a cell and ask what it would rule out. If it would leave some colour, row or column with no room at all, that cell can't hold a crown. This is often the step that breaks a hard puzzle open. Stuck? The 💡 hint shows the next logical step and explains it in one line.

Daily and practice

The daily Crowns is an 8×8 puzzle that is the same for everyone, with a new one at midnight. Solve it to grow your streak and share your time without giving the answer away. In practice you get a fresh puzzle every time: Easy boards are 6×6 and need only the basic moves, Medium boards are 7×7 or 8×8 and ask for pairs, and Hard boards are 9×9 and need careful look-ahead. Your best and average times are saved on this device.