Queens' Quarrel

The eight queens puzzle. Place eight queens on a chessboard, one row at a time from top to bottom, so that no two share a column or a diagonal. A queen that would be attacked is refused, and the queen attacking her is shown. You may lift the last queen. A game asks for four different patterns. The 92 solutions fall into 12 patterns once turned and mirrored boards count as the same, so one solution turned round does not count again. Refused queens are your misses, and fewer is better. You can ask the computer to solve from the current board, but its pattern is then marked SHOWN and no longer counts for you. If too few patterns are left to reach four, the game ends.

Controls: Use either controller. Push left and right to move the queen along the row; the left button places her. The right button opens the menu (LIFT QUEEN, SOLVE, END, BACK), where up and down choose and a button picks.

ColecoVision version credited in the source to Claude (an AI made by Anthropic) for Amy Studio, in Amy, the language by Amy Bienvenu, 2026: a reimagined adaptation of the published rules. From COMPUTE!'s Gazette, July 1986: original Commodore 64 program (no author named in the issue). This is a modern homebrew adaptation, not a commercial Coleco release.