Queens vs Sumrex: same grid, plus a sum
May 3, 2026
Queens hands you geometry. Sumrex adds arithmetic.
LinkedIn's Queens is a small, well-made daily logic grid. The board is divided into coloured regions, and you place one queen in each row, each column, and each region — with the rule that no two queens may touch, even at a corner. Find the placement and you've solved the puzzle. The deduction is purely positional; nothing is ever added together.
Sumrex uses the same placement rules. One rex per row, one per column, one per coloured region, none touching. But Sumrex also writes a digit on every cell of the grid, and tells you a target. The six chosen rexes must add up to that target exactly.
What's on the board
A Queens board is a square grid of coloured regions and nothing else. The cells are blank. Your only inputs are the colours and the position rules.
A Sumrex board is the same shape, with one addition: every cell carries a digit from 1 to 9. The number above the grid is today's target sum. Your job is to find a placement that obeys the position rules and hits the target.
Both games let you mark cells you've ruled out. In Queens, an X. In Sumrex, the same cross — Sumrex cycles each cell empty → crossed → rex → empty on tap, so a cross is a one-tap commitment and undo is one tap further. Crosses don't count toward the puzzle in either game; they're scratch paper, and you're free to use them or not.
Where the deduction lives
Queens is solved by elimination. Each colour region must hold exactly one queen, so a row that only crosses one cell of a given region pins that cell. Adjacency propagates: every queen blocks its eight neighbours. After enough scans of rows, columns, and regions, the forced moves cascade.
Sumrex starts from the same elimination. Six regions, six rows, six columns, no neighbours — the geometry alone narrows the puzzle by a lot. But the geometry rarely closes the puzzle on its own. The sum target is what closes it.
Take a small example. Suppose today's target is 12. Each rex sits in a different row, so each row contributes one digit to the sum. Take the smallest digit available in each row — call it the row-minimum. If five row-minimums total 9, the sixth rex is at most 12 − 9 = 3. Every cell in that row with a digit larger than 3 can be crossed immediately. Often that single sum-bound step opens a forced move within seconds.
That's the genuine twist. Queens is a game of placement. Sumrex is placement with a budget — and the budget is what lets you cross cells the geometry can't.
One solution, no guessing
Both games make the same promise: every puzzle has exactly one answer, and you should be able to reach it by deduction alone. Queens upholds that with its placement rules; Sumrex upholds it by checking each generated puzzle through a forced-move solver before it ships. If a candidate Sumrex needs a guess to solve, it's rejected and not seen.
For a player, that means the morning is calm. You're not gambling on a placement and seeing if it cascades. Every move is supported by something — a row that's run out of options, a region that's down to one cell, a sum cap that excludes a digit. You stop when you're done.
Feedback when you check
Queens checks placement live. Drop a queen in a row that already has one, or adjacent to another queen, and the conflict is flagged immediately, though Queens leaves the queen where you put it.
Sumrex defers the check. Place six rexes and press Check. If a rule is broken — two share a row, column, or region, or two are touching — Sumrex tells you which rule, but never which rex. If the rules are all met but the sum is off, you see by how much. The deferred check makes the placement rules feel like a single test against your whole solution, not a thousand small flags. Each Check also costs a point on the shareable, so most players exhaust crosses before committing a rex.
Share strings
Queens leans on a timer in its shareable. The solve time is small, legible, and very competitive in a group chat where everyone races the same puzzle.
Sumrex broadcasts a different signal. Its shareable shows your Check count, the puzzle date, and a link — quieter, less rivalrous, more "I solved it" than "I solved it faster". The two shareables suit different group chats.
What both games share
It's worth saying out loud: Sumrex is not trying to replace Queens, and most of the contract is identical.
- One puzzle a day. Sumrex pins to 00:00 UTC; Queens pins to LinkedIn's clock. The whole audience plays the same puzzle on the same date.
- Pure logic. No guessing, no backtracking; every move is a forced one if you've been thorough.
- A short morning. Both fit comfortably inside a tea break.
- Free to play. Sumrex needs no account, no email, no sign-in; progress lives in your browser. A full archive of every past puzzle sits in the Sumrex archive.
If you like one-and-done daily logic puzzles in general, both games sit comfortably in that lane.
Which one to play
If you want a quick, clean placement puzzle with live feedback and a competitive timer, Queens is the obvious answer. If you've played Queens for a while and the geometric deduction has started feeling familiar, Sumrex gives you the same shape with a second layer of work — the digit on every cell, the sum bound, the budget closing on the last few rexes. The morning feels different.
Sumrex is the version where the colours alone aren't enough. Play it the morning Queens gives up its last secret too quickly.
Read the full Sumrex rules, browse the archive, or get unstuck with today's hints article.