Meowdoku vs Queens vs Star Battle: What's the Same and What Differs

This page compares Meowdoku with LinkedIn’s Queens and the classic Star Battle puzzle: the rules they share, what is different, which skills carry over, and the mistakes players make when switching. Meowdoku’s rules come from Oakever Games’ App Store listing, checked on November 1, 2026, along with its Google Play listing and website. The Queens rules come from LinkedIn’s help page and the Star Battle rules from a Grandmaster Puzzles rules page, both checked on November 1, 2026.

What rules do the three puzzles share?

All three are placement puzzles on a grid split into regions, with the same two kinds of constraint.

Meowdoku. According to Oakever’s listing, the board is divided into colored sections, and you must place exactly one cat in each. Cats may not share a row or a column, and they may not touch each other, not even diagonally.

Queens. LinkedIn’s help page says every row, every column and every colored region needs exactly one crown, which LinkedIn also calls a queen. Crowns can’t sit in adjacent cells, including diagonally.

Star Battle. Grandmaster Puzzles describes the genre as placing stars so that each row, column and bold region contains the indicated number of stars, with no two stars in cells that share an edge or a corner. With one star per line, that is exactly the Queens rule set.

There is one small difference in wording. Oakever’s listing says cats may not share a row or column, rather than saying each row and column holds exactly one. On a square board with as many sections as rows, the two wordings lead to the same answers: one cat per section gives as many cats as rows, and if no two share a row, every row ends up with exactly one. Oakever doesn’t list its board sizes, so that is the condition to keep in mind.

What is different?

The rules match, but the games built around them don’t:

	Meowdoku	Queens on LinkedIn	Star Battle
Piece	Cat	Crown, also called a queen	Star
Per row, column and region	One cat per section; no shared rows or columns	Exactly one	The indicated number, such as one or two
Regions	Colored sections	Colored regions	Bold outlined regions
Touching	Not allowed, even diagonally	Not allowed, even diagonally	No shared edge or corner
Placing	Double-tap a tile	Tap to cycle empty, mark, crown	Depends on the app or book
Mistakes	3 hearts; each wrong cat costs one	Undo, Clear and an optional Auto-check	Not part of the rules
Daily play	Daily Puzzles and global leaderboards; plays offline	New puzzle at midnight PT; old ones expire	Not part of the rules
Board size	Not listed	Not listed on the help page	Grandmaster Puzzles prefers at least 8x8 for one star, 10x10 for two

Mistakes are the biggest practical difference. Meowdoku checks every cat you place: a wrong one costs a heart, and you have three. Oakever’s own advice in the listing is that guessing won’t save you. LinkedIn’s help page describes Undo, Clear and an optional Auto-check setting that highlights rule breaks, and it doesn’t mention a mistake limit. In Queens, an idea you test can simply be undone; with cats, a wrong guess costs a heart.

Marking works differently. In Queens, tapping a cell cycles it between empty, a mark that rules the cell out, and a crown, and a setting called Auto-place X’s marks impossible cells for you. Oakever’s listings only describe double-tapping to place a cat, and neither the listings nor its website document a marking tool.

The daily rhythm differs. LinkedIn releases one Queens puzzle each day at midnight Pacific Time, and the previous day’s puzzle expires and can no longer be played. It tracks streaks and shows company or school leaderboards. Oakever promises brand-new Daily Puzzles every day, global leaderboards for the fastest completion times, and play without an internet connection.

Star Battle is a genre, not an app. Grandmaster Puzzles says Hans Eendebak created it for the 2003 World Puzzle Championship in Arnhem, the Netherlands, and that it likely grew out of an earlier puzzle by Tim Peeters called Cattle. Puzzles in the genre can ask for more than one star per line, and the site prefers bigger grids for its own puzzles, as the table shows.

How do two-star Star Battle puzzles change things?

In a two-star puzzle, every row, column and region holds two stars, and the no-touch rule still applies. The logic is the same kind of counting with the numbers raised. A region that fits entirely inside one row must hold both of that row’s stars, so the rest of the row is empty. Two stars in the same row can never sit side by side, so they always have at least one empty cell between them. If you come to two-star puzzles from the one-star games, the habit to drop is assuming that one piece settles a whole row or column.

Which skills carry over?

Because the core rules match, almost every deduction transfers between all three one-star puzzles:

• Start with the smallest regions. A region with one or two open cells forces or nearly forces a piece.
• Clear around every piece. Its row, its column, its region and its eight neighbors are empty.
• Watch regions trapped in one line. If all open cells of a region share a row or column, no other region can use that line.
• Count regions against lines. If two regions fit inside the same two rows, every other cell in those rows is empty.
• Test a cell before committing. If a piece there would leave some region with no legal cell, the cell is empty.

These are written up step by step in our tips guide, and the official rules are summarized on the rules page. If you want more practice with the same one-star rules in a browser, our own free puzzle Cat Zones uses them with its own boards; it is a separate game, not Meowdoku.

What mistakes do players make when switching?

• Playing Queens like chess. Despite the name, a queen only blocks its row, its column, its region and the cells touching it. Two pieces can share a long diagonal in all three puzzles.
• Bringing undo habits to Meowdoku. Trial and error is cheap with an Undo button and costs a heart with cats.
• Relying on automatic marks. Queens can place X marks for you; in Meowdoku you may need to track eliminated cells yourself.
• Using one-star counting in two-star puzzles. One piece no longer settles a row.
• Waiting to finish yesterday’s Queens. LinkedIn’s old puzzles expire at midnight PT.

Meowdoku itself runs on phones and on Windows through Google Play Games; the PC and online guide explains the options.

What hasn’t been announced?

• Meowdoku’s board sizes and difficulty levels.
• What happens after the third mistake.
• Whether the app has a marking or pencil tool; Oakever’s listings and website don’t describe one.
• Whether Oakever drew on Star Battle or Queens. Its listings never mention either and compare the game with Sudoku and Minesweeper instead.