Love Queens or Meowdoku? You're Already Solving Star Battle
If you place queens on LinkedIn every morning, or cats on a coloured grid in Meowdoku, here's something the games don't mention: you're solving a puzzle with more than twenty years of history, and you've only seen its first level.
Same puzzle, different costume
LinkedIn's Queens, Meowdoku, Cat Sudoku! and the other cat puzzle games all share the same rules:
- Place one piece in every row, every column and every coloured region.
- No two pieces may touch, not even diagonally.
That's Star Battle, a logic puzzle Hans Eendebak created for the 2003 World Puzzle Championship. In the original you place stars rather than queens or cats, and the regions are outlined rather than coloured. The New York Times publishes it as Two Not Touch, and the idea goes back further still, to the classic Eight Queens chess problem.
Queens and the cat games use the simplest version: one star per row, column and region. Star Battle also comes with two or three per region, and that's where it gets interesting.
What one star leaves out
With one star per region, most puzzles give way to a couple of moves: find a region squeezed into a single row or column, and clear the rest of that line.
Two stars per region, on the 10×10 grid the Times uses, brings new techniques: counting stars across several rows at once, spotting regions that must share a line, and ruling out a cell because a star there would leave a neighbouring region with no room. Three stars on a 14×14 grid is a different game again, and one puzzle can take half an hour.
If the daily Queens now takes you a minute, you're ready for more.
What to look for in a Star Battle app
When people compare these apps, the same four questions come up.
Hints. A good hint tells you why a move is right: "this cell must be empty, because a star here would leave no room for row 7". Some games only mark a wrong move, or give you three strikes before you start again. A hint that names the reason is how you learn the techniques the bigger grids need.
Hard puzzles. Look for more than one star count. An app with only one-star grids stays at the Queens level for good.
Offline play. Puzzles are ideal for flights and commutes, so check that the app plays without a connection.
Ads. Star Battle asks you to hold the whole grid in your head, and an ad after every level breaks that. Meowdoku, for example, shows one after almost every level, and Android Central's reviewer found no way to pay to remove them on Android.
Our take
We make Star Battle Puzzles for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Android, so we're not neutral. Here's how it answers those four questions:
- Hints explain the logic behind every move.
- Hard puzzles: five challenges, from 8×8 one-star (the Queens and Meowdoku format) through 10×10 one- and two-star and 12×12 two-star, up to 14×14 three-star. Over 20,000 puzzles, every one solvable by logic alone.
- Offline: plays fully offline once installed.
- Ads: none, ever. 50 free plays, then buy more or subscribe.
If you enjoy Queens or the cat puzzles, start with the 8×8 grids; they'll feel familiar. When those get easy, move up to the one-star 10×10s, then try two stars on the same size. After that, the 12×12 two-star and 14×14 three-star grids are waiting.
Download Star Battle Puzzles for
Star Battle Puzzles is made by Egghead Games, the team behind Logic Grid Puzzles. We make puzzle apps with a "magazine-quality" philosophy: no ads, no gimmicks, just great puzzles.