One queen per row, column, and color. No touching.
Simple Queens is a calm, focused logic puzzle for iPhone and iPad. No timers forcing your hand, no ads, no account required — just a crisp deduction puzzle that tells you why a move works when you ask for help.
Four rules. One correct answer.
Every puzzle has exactly one solution, reachable through pure logic — no guessing required.
One queen per row
Each row of the board holds exactly one queen.
One queen per column
Each column holds exactly one queen too.
One queen per region
Each colored region on the board must contain exactly one queen.
No touching, ever
Two queens can never sit in adjacent cells — including diagonally.
Tap
Tap an empty cell to mark it with an ✕ — your note that a queen can't go there.
Quick double-tap
Tap again within three quarters of a second to place a queen 👑 on that cell.
Slow second tap
Wait a beat longer, then tap again to simply clear the ✕ back to empty.
Drag
Drag across several cells to mark or unmark them all at once.
Built for people who like to think it through
Every puzzle is checked ahead of time to make sure it's solvable by logic alone.
Hints that teach, not solve
Ask for a hint and Simple Queens points at a cell and explains the exact deduction — it never fills the board in for you. You place the queen or mark yourself.
Boards from 5×5 to 12×12
Start small while you learn the ropes, then work up to large boards that demand real multi-step reasoning.
Five difficulty tiers
Easy, Medium, Hard, Extra Hard, and Extreme — scored by exactly which deduction techniques a puzzle requires, not just board size.
Colorblind-friendly theme
Switch to an alternate region palette designed to keep every color distinguishable, right from Settings.
Game Center leaderboards & achievements
Best-time leaderboards for every board size, plus achievements for speed, streaks, and completing boards without marks or hints — all optional.
No account, no ads, fully offline
Every puzzle ships with the app. There's nothing to download, no ads, and no tracking — it plays the same with or without a connection.
Frequently asked questions
How do hints work, and do they cost anything in-game?
Tap the hint button and Simple Queens runs the same step-by-step logical solver used to design every puzzle. It highlights the one cell your next move should affect and explains why — for example, "this is the only remaining cell in this region" — then lets you place the queen or mark yourself.
Using a hint adds a 60-second penalty to your puzzle time, since it's getting help, but it never changes your move count or undoes your progress.
Does Simple Queens need an internet connection?
No. Every puzzle ships inside the app itself, so you can play entirely offline. An internet connection is only used if you choose to sign in to Game Center for leaderboards and achievements.
Is there a colorblind-friendly mode?
Yes. Open Settings and switch the theme to the colorblind-friendly palette, which uses a region color set chosen to stay distinguishable for the most common forms of color vision deficiency.
I lost my progress after reinstalling or switching devices — can I get it back?
Puzzle progress (completion, best times, in-progress boards) is stored locally on your device and isn't currently synced between devices or restored from the App Store alone. If you play with Game Center signed in, your best times and achievements for each board size are still visible there even after a reinstall.
What board sizes are available?
Boards from 5×5 up to 12×12 are available today. Larger sizes may arrive in a future update.
I found a bug or a puzzle that seems unsolvable. What do I do?
Please get in touch and include the board size, difficulty, and roughly what you were doing when it happened — a screenshot helps a lot. Every shipped puzzle is machine-verified to be solvable, so a genuinely unsolvable board is treated as a bug.
Was AI used to create this app?
Yes, openly so. Simple Queens was built by a single software developer with 26+ years of professional experience, as a personal learning exercise in using modern AI-assisted development tools — it's not an AI-generated app in the "describe it and get an app" sense. The game's logic, architecture, and code were written and reviewed by that developer, using AI tools the way you'd use any other modern development tool.
This app was not "vibe coded" — it was crafted, thoughtfully, through a combination of hand-written code, standard software development practices, and AI tools.
The game's artwork (the app icon and the achievement/leaderboard icons) was created using purchased graphic design software that includes AI-assisted features.
Need help, or have feedback?
Whether it's a bug report, a puzzle that doesn't look right, or just an idea for the game — I'd like to hear it.
✉️ support@simplequeens.comI read every message personally and do my best to reply within a few days.
Privacy Policy
Last updated October 2026
What this app collects
Simple Queens is designed to need as little data as possible. Your puzzle progress, completion times, and settings are stored only on your device, using Apple's SwiftData framework. This information is never transmitted to me or to any third party.
Game Center (optional)
If you choose to sign in to Game Center, your best times and achievement progress are shared with Apple to power leaderboards and achievements. That exchange is handled entirely by Apple's Game Center service and is covered by Apple's own privacy policy — Simple Queens never sees your Apple ID or Game Center credentials directly.
No ads, no analytics, no third parties
- No advertising networks
- No analytics or crash-reporting SDKs
- No account creation, and no data sold or shared with third parties
Children's privacy
Simple Queens does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, including children, since it doesn't collect personal information at all beyond the optional, Apple-managed Game Center connection described above.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted on this page with a new "last updated" date.
Contact
Questions about privacy can be sent to support@simplequeens.com.