Star Battle Rules: How to Play, Strategies and Variations

What is Star Battle?

Star Battle is a placement puzzle. You get a square grid divided into irregular outlined regions, and you must place stars so that every row, every column and every region contains the same number of stars. On top of that, no two stars may touch, not even at a corner.

The number of stars per row, column and region is stated with the puzzle. In a 1-star puzzle there is exactly one star in each; in a 2-star puzzle there are exactly two. Small grids such as 5×5 or 8×8 usually use one star, while the classic competition format is a 10×10 grid with 10 regions and two stars in each.

There are no numbers to add and no words to know. The whole puzzle is spatial reasoning, which makes it easy to pick up. If you have played Sudoku, the idea of "exactly one per row, column and region" will feel familiar; the no-touching rule is what makes Star Battle its own thing.

A short history

Star Battle was created by the Dutch puzzle designer Hans Eendebak for the 2003 World Puzzle Championship, held in Arnhem in the Netherlands. Competitive solvers took to it immediately, and it has remained a staple of championship and qualifying rounds run under the World Puzzle Federation ever since.

Outside competitions the puzzle has picked up other names. The New York Times publishes it as Two Not Touch, a name that neatly sums up the rules of the 2-star version.

The biggest boost came in May 2024, when LinkedIn launched its first daily puzzle games, Pinpoint, Queens and Crossclimb. Queens is a 1-star Star Battle presented with colored regions instead of outlined ones, and you place crowns instead of stars. It introduced the puzzle to millions of people who had never heard of it. To be clear on one common mix-up: Star Battle was never renamed from Queens. Star Battle is the original puzzle from 2003, and Queens is LinkedIn's branded version of its 1-star form.

The core rules

Every Star Battle follows four rules. The puzzle tells you N, the number of stars, before you start.

1. 1N stars in every rowEach horizontal row contains exactly N stars. Not more, not fewer.
2. 2N stars in every columnEach vertical column also contains exactly N stars.
3. 3N stars in every regionEach outlined (or colored) region contains exactly N stars, whatever its size or shape.
4. 4Stars never touchNo star may be in any of the eight cells surrounding another star. That includes diagonal neighbors, not just the cells above, below and to the sides.

Because an N-star puzzle on an n×n grid has n regions, the grid always ends up with exactly n × N stars. A 10×10 two-star puzzle, for instance, has 20 stars in total.

A solved example

Here is a small 1-star puzzle: a 5×5 grid with five colored regions. Each row, column and region needs exactly one star, and no two stars may touch.

The way in is the yellow region. It lies entirely in the top row, so the top row's only star must be yellow, which rules out the coral cells in that row. That leaves just one coral cell, so the coral star goes there. Its neighbors are now eliminated, and a few more squeezes (the blue region is left with cells only in the fourth row, and the third row is left with only green cells) place the remaining stars.

How to play: a step-by-step method

This routine works on any Star Battle, from a 5×5 warm-up to a championship 10×10.

1. Start with the smallest regions. A region of two or three cells has very few places for its stars. Tiny regions often give you a star, or a set of eliminations, straight away.
2. Mark every cell that cannot hold a star. Use a dot or an X. Each time you place a star, mark all eight neighbors at once, then mark the rest of its row, column and region if they are now full.
3. Look for regions trapped in one row or column. If all of a region's remaining cells sit in a single row, that row's star (or stars) must come from that region, so every other cell in the row is eliminated.
4. Place forced stars. When a row, column or region has exactly as many open cells as it still needs stars, and those cells do not touch, fill them all.
5. Recount after every move. Keep track of how many stars each row, column and region still needs. New eliminations nearly always open up the next deduction somewhere else.
6. Never guess. A well-made Star Battle has one solution reachable by logic. If you are stuck, look for a squeeze across two or three rows.

Strategies experienced solvers use

The basic steps handle most 1-star puzzles. Two-star grids reward a few deeper patterns that competition solvers use constantly.

Daily practice is the fastest way to learn these patterns. StarBattle.gg publishes a free daily 1-star grid that everyone solves together, plus an unlimited mode in three sizes, which makes it an easy place to drill squeezes and eliminations until they become automatic.

Popular variations

Most variants change only the star count or the presentation. The ones you are most likely to meet:

• 1-star puzzles. One star per row, column and region on small grids. The ideal place to start, and the format behind LinkedIn's Queens.
• Queens. LinkedIn's daily game, launched in May 2024. It uses colored regions instead of outlines and crowns instead of stars, but the rules are those of a 1-star Star Battle.
• 2-star puzzles. The classic format, usually on a 10×10 grid. Two stars per line makes the counting far richer and is where the block and squeeze techniques really shine.
• Two Not Touch. The name The New York Times uses for its Star Battle puzzles. Same rules, different title.
• 3-star and larger. Bigger grids with three stars per row, column and region appear in expert collections and competitions. They take longer but use the same logic.

Common mistakes

The classic error is forgetting diagonals. Stars cannot touch at a corner either, so every placed star rules out all eight cells around it. If your solution suddenly breaks down, check the diagonals first.

Next is solving regions in isolation. A region is only one of three constraints on every cell. A star you place for a region also settles a row and a column, so always follow the consequences along both lines.

In 2-star puzzles, losing count is easy. It helps to note, even mentally, which rows and columns already have one star and need exactly one more.

Finally, beware of guessing and hoping. It feels quicker, but a wrong guess can survive for many moves before the contradiction shows up, and by then it is hard to unpick.

How Star Battle compares to other puzzles

Star Battle sits between Sudoku and shading puzzles. Like Sudoku, it has the same constraint on rows, columns and regions, but you place objects instead of digits. Like Nonograms and Nurikabe, the finished grid is a visual pattern and much of the reasoning is about which cells stay empty.

If you enjoy the whole-grid counting of Star Battle, Killer Sudoku offers a similar mix of local and global logic with numbers, while Masyu is another rule-light Japanese-style puzzle with no numbers at all.

Frequently asked questions