Cat Queens — Free Meowdoku-Style Cat Logic Puzzle

Four rules, and the one that does most of the work

The whole rulebook fits in one breath: one cat in every row, one in every column, one in every colour region, and no two cats touching — not side by side, not diagonally. A grid always has as many regions as rows, so a 7×7 board carries seven regions and exactly seven cats. The first three rules will feel familiar if you have ever sat down with a daily Sudoku puzzle with a built-in solver: they are "house" constraints, one of each thing per house, and they are what most new players attack first.

The fourth rule is the one that does most of the work. Rows and columns only ever remove cells in straight lines. The touch rule removes the eight cells around a cat, and that punches holes into neighbouring rows and regions that the line rules never reach. Nearly every stuck moment ends with the same small observation: whichever cell of a cramped region takes the cat, one particular cell next door is attacked by every option — so it can be crossed out before anything is placed. Once you see that pattern, the puzzle stops being trial and error and becomes a chain of small certainties.

None of the grids here ask you to guess. Every puzzle — free play, daily or campaign — is generated with exactly one solution and then checked by a step-by-step logic solver, so a path of forced moves always exists. The only exception is the Expert tier at the very end of the campaign, where a level may need a one-step "what if": place a cat provisionally, follow the consequences, and take it back when they clash.

A 5×5 solved by logic alone — no guessing

Here is a real 5×5 board, the smallest size in the game. The letters are its five colour regions; rows and columns are numbered from the top-left corner, so (4,3) means row 4, column 3. Five cats, five deductions, no guessing.

1. Regions A and C both live entirely inside columns 1 and 2. Two regions, two columns: the cats of those two columns must belong to A and C, so no other region may put a cat there. That removes region D's cells in column 2, (4,2) and (5,2).
2. Region D is left with a single cell, (4,3). Place the first cat. With Auto-X on, the rest of row 4, the rest of column 3 and the eight cells around the cat fill with crosses — including (3,2), (3,3), (3,4), (5,2), (5,3) and (5,4).
3. Region E has just lost (4,4) and (4,5) to row 4, and (3,4), (5,3) and (5,4) to the new cat's neighbourhood. Its only cell left is (5,5): second cat.
4. Row 3 now has one candidate. (3,2), (3,3) and (3,4) touch the cat at (4,3); (3,5) shares column 5 with the cat at (5,5). The cat goes at (3,1), which also settles region C.
5. Row 2: (2,1) shares column 1 with the new cat, (2,2) touches it diagonally, (2,3) sits in column 3 and (2,5) in column 5. Only (2,4) is left — the fourth cat. In row 1, columns 1, 3, 4 and 5 are all spoken for, so the last cat lands at (1,2) and region A is done.

Notice what never happened: no cell was tried "to see what breaks". If you prefer the touch rule as an opener, there is another first move that reaches the same board: every cell of region A attacks both (1,3) and (2,1), so both can be crossed out before a single cat is placed. Bigger grids hide longer versions of exactly these two ideas — a region confined to a line, and a cell that every option of a region touches — and the Hint button names them when you cannot find them yourself.

What each control actually does — and what it won't do for you

Puzzle apps love to blur the line between a helper and an autopilot. Here is exactly where each control stops.

Marking. Tap a cell to cycle it: empty, then an X, then a cat, then empty again. A right-click on desktop toggles an X directly. With a keyboard, the arrow keys move around the grid, Space or Enter cycles the cell, X marks it, C or Q places a cat, Backspace clears, U undoes, H asks for a hint, N starts a new free-play puzzle and R resets the board.

Auto-X is on by default. Whenever you place a cat it marks the rest of that cat's row, its column, its colour region and the eight cells around it. What it won't do: think ahead. It only records the consequences of cats already on the board, so the clever eliminations — a region confined to one line, a cell every candidate attacks — are still yours to find. Switch it off in the toolbar when you want to practise seeing those consequences unaided.

Conflict highlighting is live: two cats sharing a row, column or region, or touching each other, light up the moment the second one lands. There are no lives, no lockout and no penalty — fix it and carry on. What it won't do: a cat that breaks no rule but sits on the wrong cell is not flagged. A legal-but-wrong cat looks exactly like a right one until, several moves later, some row runs out of room. That is deliberate; the alternative would be an answer key in disguise.

Undo steps back through the whole attempt, as far back as you like, and Reset clears the board in one go. Hint is counted — on the button and again in the win panel — so you always know how much help a solve took. It checks for a wrong cat first and points at it; otherwise it shows the next forced deduction, the cells to cross out or the cat to place, with the reason; it reveals a cat outright only when logic is exhausted. The timer starts on your first move, pauses whenever the tab is hidden and stops at the last cat.

Daily puzzle, 150-level campaign, or unlimited free play

Daily gives everyone the same grid for a given calendar date — the board is derived from the date itself, so the puzzle on your phone matches your friend's, the same way a daily Wordle with 4- to 7-letter words hands out one shared word. The size follows the weekday: 7×7 on Monday and Tuesday, 8×8 on Wednesday and Thursday, 9×9 on Friday and Saturday, and 8×8 on Sunday. A new grid arrives at your local midnight. Solving on consecutive days builds a streak; miss a day and the streak shows 0 again. After a win you can copy a short result line or save a share image — neither reveals the solution.

Levels is a 150-level campaign that grows with you: levels 1–8 are 5×5, 9–28 are 6×6, 29–63 are 7×7, 64–103 are 8×8, 104–133 are 9×9 and 134–150 are 10×10. Levels unlock in order, every solved level can be replayed, and your best time for each one is kept. The final levels of the campaign are where the Expert tier lives.

Free play is the unlimited mode: pick any size from 5×5 to 10×10 and press New as often as you like. Each puzzle is graded Easy, Medium, Hard or Expert by the deductions it needs, and the default target rises with the grid — Easy for 5×5 and 6×6, Medium for 7×7 and 8×8, Hard for 9×9 and 10×10. The largest boards take a moment to generate; the game holds a placeholder of the right size while it works, so nothing jumps around.

Everything the game remembers — settings, daily streak, campaign progress and best times — is stored in this browser's local storage on your own device. Nothing is sent to a server, and there is no account, no sync between devices, no leaderboard and no multiplayer. Clear your site data or switch browsers and the progress starts from zero, so a long streak is worth remembering which browser it lives in.

Cat Queens vs Meowdoku vs LinkedIn Queens vs Star Battle

All four belong to the same puzzle family. The core rule — one piece per row, column and region, none touching — comes from Star Battle, a pencil-puzzle genre that predates every app on this list; LinkedIn turned it into a daily crown-placing game in 2024, and a cat-themed mobile app made it go viral in 2026. The honest pitch for this version: it is the one you can open in a browser tab right now, with a campaign attached. The table sticks to what each one verifiably does; a dash means we could not confirm it.

Where they win: Meowdoku is the app that started the trend, with a home-screen icon and the original cat theme, and a phone app is the right shape for a queue or a commute. LinkedIn Queens comes with the one thing a free browser game cannot offer — your real network — so you can compare solve times with colleagues, and your streak follows your account. Star Battle is the deep end: two stars per house on larger grids, in puzzle magazines and championships, for people who have outgrown everything here. Pick this one when you want zero setup, a campaign that climbs from 5×5 to 10×10, and as much practice as you like.

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.

Habits that stall a solve — and what to do instead

Most stalls are not hard puzzles; they are one of these six habits.

Starting with the biggest region

The big region has the most options and tells you the least. Start with the smallest region on the board — two or three cells — because it has the fewest possible homes for its cat, and the cells that every one of those homes attacks are easy to spot.

Treating rows and columns as the only houses

A colour region is a house too. If all of a region's remaining cells sit in one row, that row's cat belongs to the region, and every other cell in the row can be crossed out. The reverse works as well: a row whose candidates all fall inside one region claims that region.

Forgetting the corners

The touch rule includes diagonals. A cat on the edge of its region removes cells in the region next door, which is often what breaks a neighbouring region open. When two regions sit side by side and both look stuck, check what their corner cells do to each other.

Placing a cat because it fits

Legal is not the same as forced. The game will not flag a cat that breaks no rule but is in the wrong place, so the test is whether you can say why no other cell in that house works. It is the same discipline that clears a Minesweeper board by deduction instead of luck: a move you cannot justify is a guess with better posture.

Turning Auto-X off too early

Auto-X is a teacher before it is a crutch: it shows how much a single cat really removes — a row, a column, a region and eight neighbours. Keep it on until that picture is automatic, then switch it off in the toolbar to train your eye on the bigger boards.

Using Hint as a reveal button

Hint shows the next forced step and the reason behind it; it only reveals a cat outright when logic is exhausted. Read the reason, then try to find the step after it yourself. Hints are counted on the win panel, which keeps the count honest.

When this isn't the puzzle you want

Cat Queens is quiet and solitary: one board, one solver, and no pressure beyond a timer you can ignore. If what you actually want tonight is noise and other people, a multiplayer Crazy Eights card game with friends over a shared link is the opposite kind of fun — everyone joins from their own phone and the rules take thirty seconds. If you want numbers instead of cats, the daily Sudoku linked above scratches the same deduction itch with a solver attached, and if you want a board that keeps changing under you, 2048 is one click away in the related tools below. And if you are here for the daily habit more than the puzzle, the Daily tab is built to be finished in five minutes and left alone until tomorrow.

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