5×5 Queens puzzles — unlimited practice

A fresh 5×5 board whenever you want one, at any difficulty, with 800 finished 5×5 boards behind this page. It is the smallest board on the site, and the quickest way to watch a technique work from beginning to end without losing the thread. Place 5 queens: one in every row, one in every column, one in every colour, and no two touching — corners included. Change the difficulty with the pill beside the board, switch size from the Unlimited tab, and keep going: no daily limit, no streak to protect, no clock you have to beat.

What a 5×5 Queens board asks of you

Five colours over twenty-five squares, and a touching rule that costs a fortune: one queen can kill a quarter of the grid outright. There is nowhere to make progress by accident here. Almost every deduction is load-bearing, and the one you missed is missing in plain sight rather than buried somewhere you have not looked yet.

Which technique opens the board is what the difficulty pill beside it really changes. The strategy guide works through each named technique in the order the solver reaches for them, and the hint button on this board names the same ones.

Difficulty at 5×5 is a claim about the reasoning

The label never describes the square count — every board on this page has the same 25 squares. It describes what a board demands before it gives up its first queen, and the two move independently: these 25 squares rated beginner fall to plain counting, and the same 25 rated hard need an argument spanning three regions at once. The Queens Unlimited hub makes the same case with two real boards side by side.

Beginner — 150 boards. One region already holds a single square, so the first queen is free and the rest falls to counting rows, columns and colours. That one gift is deliberate: from an empty grid the simplest techniques have nothing to bite on without it.
Easy — 250 boards. Opens on a colour confined to one row or column. It owns that line, everything else in the line is dead, and the 5×5 comes apart from there.
Medium — 250 boards. Several of those confinements chained together, each one visible only after the last has been marked off — which across 25 squares means marking is part of the technique, not tidying up after it.
Hard — 150 boards. Pigeonhole arguments spanning several of the 5 regions at once, plus the exclusion reasoning that rules a square out by showing what it would break.

Start at hard. On a board this small the gentle buckets are over before a technique has room to show itself, and a 5×5 rated hard is the shortest complete piece of Queens reasoning anywhere on the site.

Practising at 5×5

The whole grid fits in one glance, so this is the size where you can afford to name the technique before you place anything — say why the queen goes there, then put it there. That habit is what transfers to the big boards, where the same reasoning is true but no longer visible all at once.

Two things hold at every size. A hint never guesses: it finds the next move a person could justify, names the technique, and waits for you to press show me before it marks anything. And boredom means move up a difficulty, not a size — the same reasoning with more squares around it is not new practice. The hub page has the full method.

Every 5×5 board here is provably fair

Each one was checked twice: once for having exactly one solution, and once for being reachable from an empty grid without a single guess. The check reruns over the whole pool before every release, so it covers all 800 5×5 boards rather than the handful anybody happened to play. If you are stuck here, there is a next step and the hint can name it.

Where 5×5 sits

No daily mode goes this small — the Mini opens at 6×6 — so 5×5 exists here and nowhere else on the site.

Daily Mini — three boards a day, 6×6 to 8×8. The one that carries a streak.
Daily Max — ten boards a day, climbing to 10×10 and finishing harder than the Mini ever gets.
Archive — every past day, still playable and still scored the same way.
6×6 practice — one step up, once 5×5 at hard has stopped surprising you.

Every Queens board size

Questions people ask about 5×5 Queens puzzles

How many queens does a 5×5 board take?: 5 — one per row, one per column, one per colour. There are always exactly 5 colours, and no two queens may touch, corners included.
Is 5×5 easier than a bigger board?: Smaller, not necessarily easier. Difficulty here describes the reasoning a board demands, and a 5×5 rated hard needs an argument spanning several regions at once — which a 12×12 rated beginner never does.
How many 5×5 Queens puzzles are there?: 800 in the pool for this size, split across the four difficulties — 150 beginner, 250 easy, 250 medium, 150 hard. The picker avoids repeats within a session, so you will not see the same 5×5 twice in an evening.
Which difficulty should I start with on 5×5?: Hard. The small buckets are over too quickly to teach you anything.
Do these count towards my streak?: No. Streaks come from the daily boards. Practice is for drilling, so nothing here can break a run — or build one.
Can I play a 5×5 board on a phone?: Yes. The board sizes itself to the screen, so it stays tappable one-handed. If colour is not a reliable channel for you, turn on high-contrast colours in Settings and the regions separate by lightness instead of hue.