Crowns
Put one crown in every row, every column and every coloured region, with no two crowns touching, not even at a corner. Every board has one answer, and you can reach it by logic alone.
- Four levels: Easy to Extra Hard
- 7 techniques on its ladder
How Crowns Works
Crowns is played on a square board split into coloured regions, with as many regions as rows. Most of the work is crossing squares off. A crown rules out the rest of its row, its column, its colour and the eight squares around it, and each cross leaves the remaining crowns fewer places to go.
Boards run from 5×5 with 5 crowns on Easy to 10×10 with 10 crowns on Extra Hard. Every bundled board has exactly one solution and can be finished without guessing, and both are checked before a board ships.
When you ask for a hint, the squares that prove the next step light up in Blue and the square it settles lights up in Orange. The card names the technique, such as Colour Points or Squeeze, and More Details explains the idea in general so you can look for the next one yourself.
Crowns Hive moves the game onto a hexagonal board, where every cell sits on a row and two diagonals, and each of those lines holds one crown.
The Rules
- 1
One per Region
Place exactly one crown in each shaded colour region.
- 2
Rows and Columns
No two crowns may share a row or a column. The board has as many rows as regions, so every row and every column ends up with exactly one crown.
- 3
No Touching
Crowns can't touch each other, not even diagonally at the corners.
- 4
Marks and Crosses
Tap a square to cross it off, and tap it again to take the cross back. The board also crosses off the squares your crowns already rule out. You can turn that off in Settings if you would rather mark every square yourself.
- 5
Double-Tap to Crown
A crown takes two quick taps, and a right crown settles into place in gold. A crown that breaks a rule, or that would leave the board impossible to finish, is not placed: the square gets a terracotta cross instead, and that costs a heart. A practice board has three hearts, and hearts never run out in the daily set. A single tap takes a crown back off.
- 6
Sweep With a Drag
Drag across the board to cross off a whole run of squares at once. Start the drag on a square you already crossed off and it clears the run instead.
- 7
Use Logic
Every puzzle has one valid arrangement, and you can reach it by deduction without guessing.
The real screens.
Every picture on this page is the app itself, on a board from the game.
Where Crowns Comes From
Crowns is the one-star form of Star Battle, a puzzle Hans Eendebak created for the 2003 World Puzzle Championship in Arnhem, in the Netherlands. A Star Battle grid can ask for more than one star in every row, column and region, and no two stars may touch. Crowns always asks for one, and calls it a crown.
The idea underneath is older. In 1848 Max Bezzel set the eight queens puzzle in a German chess paper: place eight queens on a chessboard so that none of them can take another. Franz Nauck published the first full set of answers two years later. Gauss worked on it and got part of the way, and has often been credited with solving it since.
A queen guards whole diagonals. A crown only guards the diagonal squares right next to it, and the coloured regions add a third group that every crown has to satisfy.
How the Levels Differ
Easy is a 5×5 board with 5 crowns, Medium 7×7 with 7, Hard 9×9 with 9, and Extra Hard 10×10 with 10. Board size is the smaller change. What separates the bands is the hardest step a board makes you take.
Easy never needs more than Only Square Left and Colour Points. Medium adds Line Points, needed at least once on every board. Hard adds the Squeeze and the two-colour Locked Set: a Hard board needs at least two of those steps and no more than three, and at least one has to be a Squeeze over squares that are not next to each other, or a Locked Set. Extra Hard adds Locked Sets of three or more colours, Locked Sets read from the rows and columns, and the Dead End, which appears on at most one Extra Hard board in ten.
7 techniques, easiest first.
In Dayzle the hint and the solver are one engine, so these are the steps it takes to solve a Crowns board, from the first you'll meet to the rarest. Open one for a worked example and a clip of the hint teaching it on a real board.
Crown Scope Beginner Cross off every square a crown already rules out: its row, its column, its colour and the eight squares around it.
Every row, every column and every colour gets exactly one crown, and no two crowns can touch. A crown at Row 2, Column 4 therefore rules out the rest of Row 2, the rest of Column 4, every other square of its colour, and the squares touching it, including Row 1, Column 3 and Row 3, Column 5, which share neither its row nor its column.
Crossing those squares off is what makes the next step easy to see: a row only looks down to one square once the others are marked. The board does this for you by default, and this hint only appears when that setting is off.
Only Square Left Beginner Find a row, column or colour with only one open square left. Its crown goes there.
The purple region started with six squares. Crowns elsewhere have ruled out five of them, and only Row 5, Column 1 is still open. Purple needs a crown, so it goes there, and nothing else needs checking.
The same holds for a row or a column. When you are stuck, look for a line or a colour with a single open square.
Colour Points Basic Find a colour whose open squares all sit in one row or column. No other colour can have a crown in that line.
Every open square the yellow region has left sits in Row 4. Yellow's crown will be in Row 4, whichever of those squares it turns out to be, and a row holds only one crown.
So the squares of every other colour in Row 4 can't have a crown, and you can cross them all off. You don't need to know which yellow square gets the crown.
Line Points Intermediate Find a row or column whose open squares are all one colour. That colour can't have a crown anywhere else.
Column 6 still needs a crown, and its three open squares are all red. So Column 6's crown is red's crown. A colour holds only one crown, so every red square outside Column 6 can be crossed off.
This is Colour Points read the other way round.
Squeeze Advanced Find a square that every remaining option of some row, column or colour would rule out. It can't have a crown.
Row 7 still needs a crown, and only Column 3 and Column 4 are open in it. Row 8, Column 3 shares a column with the first and touches the second at a corner. Whichever of the two gets Row 7's crown, Row 8, Column 3 is ruled out, so you can cross it off now.
On harder boards the options are spread out, and each rules out the square for a different reason: one shares its row, another its colour, another touches it.
Locked Set Advanced Find a group of colours whose open squares fit into the same number of rows or columns. Those lines are used up.
The grey and green regions have open squares only in Row 2 and Row 3. Two colours need two crowns, and two rows can hold only two, so those two rows are used up by grey and green.
Every other colour's square in Row 2 or Row 3 can be crossed off. You never need to work out which colour takes which row. The same counting works with three or more colours, with columns, and with rows against columns.
Dead End Expert Suppose a crown on a square and follow the moves it forces. If a colour runs out of squares, that square can't have a crown.
Suppose a crown went on Row 1, Column 6. It rules out its row, its column, its colour and the squares around it, which leaves Row 2 with one open square, so a crown is forced there too. Follow those forced crowns and the brown region ends up with no open square, even though it still needs a crown.
Every board has exactly one solution, so a move that leads there is wrong, and Row 1, Column 6 can be crossed off. The forced moves are ones you have to picture, which is why this step is the hardest to see. It appears on at most one Extra Hard board in ten.
More visual games.
Visual
Crowns Hive
Star Battle on a hexagon: one crown per line, three ways
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Equinox
Balance suns and moons in every row
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Mosaic
Fit the pieces to cover the board exactly
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Mosaic Hive
Pack polyhex pieces into a hexagonal board
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Trailhead
Draw one closed loop that satisfies every clue
Visual
Mirror
Flip the cards, find the pairs
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