Games
Cat Queens Puzzle: Rules, Five No-Guess Deductions and Daily Habits for the Meowdoku-Style Cat Logic Game
November 9, 2026 · 8 min read
The Cat Queens puzzle has four rules you can learn in a minute: one cat in every row, every column and every colour region, and no two cats touching, not even at a corner. The Cat Queens puzzle earns a strategy guide because of that fourth rule, which turns a placement exercise into a chain of deductions that never needs a guess. If you know LinkedIn Queens, a Meowdoku-style cat puzzle or one-star Star Battle, the rules will feel familiar; if not, the 5×5 below is a complete solve you can follow in your head.
The four rules, and the one that does most of the work
A board is a square grid from 5×5 to 10×10, cut into as many colour regions as it has rows. Three rules count: exactly one cat per row, per column and per region. Nothing is given; the region shapes are the whole clue.
The fourth rule, no touching even diagonally, is the engine. Rows and columns already keep cats off the same line, so its real force lands on the diagonals: cats in neighbouring rows always sit at least two columns apart, which is why a region's shape matters more than its size.
You place cats and Xs: a tap cycles a cell from empty to X to cat, a right-click drops an X, and keyboard shortcuts cover the same moves. Auto-X is on by default: placing a cat marks the rest of its row, column and region plus its eight neighbours, and only ever records the consequences of cats you have placed. Conflicts are highlighted live; there are no lives and no lockout.
Start with the smallest region and the line it is confined to
Confinement is the first real deduction. If a region's remaining cells all sit in one row or one column, its cat is in that line, so the rest of the line can be crossed off; in reverse, if a line's open cells all belong to one region, that region's cells elsewhere go.
Here is the 5×5 the rest of this guide uses, regions named by colour. Row 1: rose, rose, cyan, cyan, cyan. Row 2: amber, rose, cyan, cyan, cyan. Row 3: amber, amber, cyan, lime, cyan. Row 4: amber, violet, violet, lime, lime. Row 5: amber, violet, lime, lime, lime. Rose and violet are three-cell clumps; cyan, with eight cells, is the big region.
Two touch-rule eliminations, explained two sections down, put Xs on row 2 column 1, row 1 column 3, row 4 column 1, row 3 column 2 and row 5 column 3. Amber is now confined to column 1 (rows 3 and 5), so column 1's cat is amber and row 1 column 1 goes; rose is confined to column 2 (rows 1 and 2), so the two violet cells in column 2 go, and violet has one cell left: row 4 column 3, the first cat.
That cat clears row 4, column 3 and its eight neighbours, leaving lime one cell, row 5 column 5: second cat. It removes row 5 column 1, so amber is row 3 column 1, which touches row 2 column 2 diagonally, so rose is row 1 column 2. Row 2 has one open cell left, column 4, for cyan. Five cats, five deductions, no guess, and the big cyan region was never reasoned about.
Two regions, two lines: the pair pattern
When single confinements run dry, look for pairs. If the open cells of the orange region all lie in rows 1 and 2, and the blue region's do too, those two rows hold exactly two cats and orange and blue need one each, so every other region's cells in rows 1 and 2 can be crossed off before you know which row holds which cat.
The mirror works as well: two lines whose open cells all belong to two regions pin those regions to those lines. The 5×5 above has a small one: after the first Xs, rose spans columns 1 and 2 and amber sits in column 1, so both violet cells in column 2 fall at once.
The touch rule as a weapon: the cell every candidate touches
Take a region with few candidates left and ask of each nearby cell whether every one of those candidates attacks it, meaning same row, same column or one of the eight neighbours. If so, the region's cat rules that cell out wherever it lands: cross it off now.
The 5×5's two openings were exactly this. Rose is row 1 column 1, row 1 column 2 and row 2 column 2. Row 2 column 1 shares a column with the first, is diagonal to the second and shares a row with the third. Row 1 column 3 shares a row with the first two and is diagonal to the third. Violet kills row 4 column 1, row 3 column 2 and row 5 column 3 the same way. Five Xs before any cat.
A scanning order you can run on every board
Run this list from the top after every cat, moving down only when a step finds nothing.
- Forced cats: any row, column or region with one open cell gets its cat; Auto-X clears the consequences.
- Smallest regions: for each region of four cells or fewer, check whether its open cells sit in one line and cross off the rest of that line.
- Lines in reverse: for each row and column, check whether its open cells all belong to one region.
- Touch rule: for each small region, cross off every cell attacked by all of its candidates; corners and clumps first.
- Pairs: two regions whose open cells fit in exactly two lines, or two lines whose open cells fit in exactly two regions.
- Nothing fired? Do not guess. Recheck your Xs, then take a hint; it flags a wrong cat before it shows anything else.
Daily-puzzle habits that keep a streak alive
The daily is one grid per local calendar date, generated from the date itself, so everyone who opens it that day gets the same board. Size follows the weekday: Monday and Tuesday 7×7, Wednesday and Thursday 8×8, Friday and Saturday 9×9, Sunday 8×8. It resets at your local midnight, not a server's.
The streak counts consecutive days with a solved daily; miss one and it shows 0 next time, with no catch-up. The timer starts on your first move, pauses while the tab is hidden and stops on the last cat, so thinking in another tab costs nothing. Hints are counted on the button and in the win panel, but a hinted solve is still a solve.
The win panel shows your time and hints and offers a share text and an image card. Your streak, best times and campaign progress live in this browser's local storage only, with no account, no sync and no leaderboard.
Mistakes that turn a logic puzzle into a guessing game
Placing a probable cat. Conflicts are flagged the moment they happen, but a cat that breaks no rule and is still wrong is not; you find out rows later when a region runs out of legal cells. If you cannot justify a cat in one sentence, it is an X or nothing.
Treating Auto-X as a checker. It marks only what a placed cat rules out, so it is exactly as right as the cat: a wrong cat plants a dozen wrong Xs, which breed confident, wrong confinements. When a board stops making sense, suspect the latest cat first.
Keeping eliminations in your head. Confinements and pairs only become visible when the dead cells are marked. Mark the X.
Undoing one move when the problem is five moves back. The culprit is usually the cat you were least sure about, and Undo goes back as far as you like, so return to the last cat you could justify. Failing that, the hint flags a wrong cat first, then an X on a cat's cell, then the next forced deduction, and reveals a cat only when logic is exhausted. Outside Expert puzzles, which may need a one-step "what if", a stuck board means a wrong mark, not an unsolvable puzzle.
How it differs from Sudoku, Meowdoku and LinkedIn Queens
Cat Queens shares its counting rules with Sudoku and its touching rule with LinkedIn Queens and Meowdoku-style cat puzzles. What differs is the format: a daily grid everyone shares, a 150-level campaign from 5×5 to 10×10, and free play at six sizes graded Easy, Medium, Hard or Expert.
The thinking transfers more than the rules suggest: Sudoku solvers know confinement as pointing pairs and box-line reduction, and the pair pattern is a hidden pair in a different hat. What does not transfer is the touch rule, because Sudoku has no notion of adjacency.
Cat Queens is an independent game by Ultimate Tools. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Oakever Games (makers of Meowdoku) or LinkedIn (makers of Queens); those names belong to their respective owners and appear here only to describe the puzzle family.
| Puzzle | Rules | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Cat Queens | One cat per row, column and colour region, none touching; no given clues | Browser: free play 5×5 to 10×10, shared daily grid, 150-level campaign |
| Sudoku | Each digit once per row, column and 3×3 box, from given digits; no adjacency rule | Our version: a daily puzzle in three difficulties plus a solver |
| LinkedIn Queens | One crown per row, column and colour region, none touching | Inside LinkedIn, one timed puzzle per day |
| Meowdoku | Same puzzle family as Queens | A separate product by Oakever Games, unconnected to Cat Queens |
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Both belong to the same family (one cat per row, column and colour region, none touching), as do LinkedIn Queens and one-star Star Battle. Cat Queens is an independent game by Ultimate Tools with its own generator, daily schedule and campaign, not affiliated with Oakever Games or LinkedIn.
Yes. Every puzzle has exactly one solution, reachable with the deductions above. The exception is the Expert tier, where a one-step "what if" may be needed: try a candidate cell, follow the consequences one step, and a contradiction rules it out. Only five campaign levels are Expert: the last two of the 9×9 band and the last three of the 10×10 band.
Rows and columns already keep cats off the same line; the diagonal ban is the only rule that lets a cat influence the rows above and below it, which is where the touch rule and the power of small regions come from. Without it the puzzle would be a plain counting exercise.
Star Battle is the older pencil-puzzle genre the Queens family is usually traced to. Its usual form asks for two stars per row, column and region, with one-star and three-star variants and the same no-touching rule. Cat Queens is the one-star case with cats; two-star grids add a different counting problem.
Start with 5×5 in free play, which generates Easy puzzles by default, or the first eight campaign levels, all 5×5. Move to 6×6 (levels 9 to 28), then 7×7 and 8×8, which default to Medium. The daily runs 7×7 to 9×9 by weekday, so a few 6×6 and 7×7 solves first help.
Related Tools
Free play from 5×5 to 10×10, today's shared daily grid and the 150-level campaign, with Auto-X, undo and counted hints.
practise the same elimination logic in a daily SudokuRows, columns and boxes instead of colour regions: a daily puzzle in three difficulties plus a solver for grids you are stuck on.
keep a second daily streak going with WordleA daily word with a streak counter, plus unlimited rounds from four to seven letters.
clear a Minesweeper board by deduction, not luckNumbers that count neighbouring mines, the same read-the-constraints habit, three difficulty levels and best times saved locally.