Crowns

Medium Crowns puzzles

Medium puzzles are 7×7 and 8×8 and add one more idea: blocking. A cell can be crossed out when a crown there would touch, or share a row or column with, every open cell of some other color, because that color would be left with nowhere to go.

Practice gives you puzzles you haven't solved yet, as many as you like, and keeps your best time without hints. Every puzzle has exactly one solution and can be solved by logic alone.

How to play Crowns

1. Place exactly one crown in every row and every column.
2. Every colored region gets exactly one crown too.
3. Crowns can't touch each other, not even diagonally.

Tap a cell once to cross it out with an X, a note to yourself that no crown can go there. Tap again to place a crown, and once more to clear the cell. Drag across the board to cross out many cells at once. On a keyboard, use the arrow keys to move, C for a crown, X for an X and Ctrl+Z to undo.

Solving tips

• Start with the small regions. A region with one cell is a free crown, and a region with two or three cells usually rules out a lot of the board.
• Look for colors stuck in one row or column. If every open cell of a color sits in the same row, that row's crown must be that color, so you can cross out the rest of the row.
• Find cells that would block a whole region. If a crown on a cell would touch or line up with every open cell of another region, that region would have nowhere left to go. Cross the cell out.
• Count regions and rows. When two colors only fit inside the same two rows, those rows belong to them, so every other color is out of those rows.