What is Star Battle?
Star Battle is a grid divided into outlined regions. You place stars so that every row, every column and every region holds the same number of stars, and no two stars touch, not even at a corner. The daily puzzle here uses one star each; the classic competition version uses two.
It first appeared in international puzzle competitions in the early 2000s and has been a favourite of puzzle championships since. It’s sometimes called Two Not Touch, after the two-star version.
Star Battle and LinkedIn’s Queens
LinkedIn’s daily Queens game is one-star Star Battle with queens instead of stars and coloured regions instead of outlines. The rules are the same: one per row, one per column, one per colour, and none touching.
So if you’ve played Queens, you can play the daily puzzle here straight away. The board even works the same way: tap once to cross a square out, twice for a star. When you’ve finished the day’s Queens and want more, practice mode has unlimited puzzles in three sizes, and the Large size is the harder two-star kind.
How to start a Star Battle
Look for the smallest regions first. A region of one square is a star. A region that sits in a single row or column decides that row or column, so you can cross out the rest of it.
Every time you place a star, cross out its row, its column, its region and the eight squares around it. Most of the puzzle is crossing out, and the stars appear when a row, column or region has only one square left.
When that runs out, look for groups: two regions that fit inside two rows take both of those rows’ stars, so everything else in the rows is empty. And before placing a star, check that it wouldn’t cross out every square of some region.
Questions
- Is this the same as LinkedIn Queens?
- The daily puzzle uses the same rules: one star per row, column and region, and stars can’t touch, even diagonally. Queens draws crowns on coloured regions; Star Battle draws stars on outlined ones.
- Can I play more than one a day?
- Yes. There’s one daily puzzle for everyone, and practice mode has unlimited puzzles in Small (6×6), Medium (8×8) and Large (10×10, two stars).
- Can stars touch diagonally?
- No. Stars can’t share an edge or a corner. Touching stars turn red on the board.
- What does two-star mean?
- In a two-star puzzle every row, column and region holds exactly two stars. That’s the classic competition format, and it takes more reasoning than the one-star kind.
- Does every puzzle have one solution?
- Yes. Each one is checked by a solver that counts every possible answer, and it’s also solved step by step without guessing before it’s published.
- How big are the puzzles?
- The daily Star Battle is 9×9 with one star per row, column and region, picked as the hardest of several candidates.