What's New in 1.0.3
Profiles
Three profiles let you tailor the interface to your solving style. Switch any time from the navigation bar — your puzzle progress is always preserved.
- Relaxed — a clean grid with no candidates or toolbars, just you and the puzzle
- Standard — candidate notes, technique hints, and the function toolbar for learning solvers
- Deep — the full toolkit: Sudoku Spaces, strong link overlays, trace mode, and 3D cube view
You choose your profile when you first open the app, and can change it freely as your skills grow.
Paper Mode
Solve puzzles the old-fashioned way — manage candidate notes entirely by hand, just as you would on paper. The grid starts empty and you decide which candidates to pencil in, which to cross out, and when to commit a value.
- Manual candidate management — fill in candidates cell by cell at your own pace; no auto-populated notes
- Adaptive hints — the hint system nudges you to fill in missing candidates, offers cleanup when notes become stale, and shows all available techniques once your notes fully cover the grid
- Stylus with pressure sensitivity — light pressure enters notes, firm pressure places values, switching modes naturally without tapping buttons
- Auto-complete with coverage — naked singles auto-complete only when you've filled in enough surrounding candidates to justify the placement
Enable Paper Mode before starting a new puzzle from the new game screen or in Settings. Available for Standard and Deep profiles.
Sudoku Spaces
Explore your puzzle from entirely new perspectives! Sudoku Spaces project the standard 9×9 grid into three alternative coordinate systems — Column-Number (CN), Row-Number (RN), and Box-Number (BN) — based on Berthier's representation theory.
- Full play mode in all four spaces — place values, edit notes, and use the smart keyboard
- Focus mode with conjugate pair links in every space
- Hint projection — technique highlights and eliminations rendered natively in each space
- Stylus input support across all projected spaces
- Swipe the toolbar to cycle between spaces
Learn more about Sudoku Spaces
Statistics
Track your solving progress with a dedicated statistics screen.
- Cumulative stats — total puzzles solved, time played, and solve rates broken down by difficulty
- Technique mastery — see which techniques you've used across all your solves, with cumulative counts
- Per-puzzle technique detection — the engine detects which techniques you applied during your solve, not just what it would have used
- "New best" badges — celebrate when you beat your personal best time or error count
- Reset statistics — start fresh if you want a clean slate
Link Display Styles
Two new visual styles for displaying chain and conjugate links on the grid:
- Electronic — PCB-trace inspired routing with octlinear (45°/90°) paths and grouped link bundles
- Cartography — clean map-style rendering with distinct visual language
Switch between Classic, Electronic, and Cartography in Display settings.
Editor Improvements
- Stylus support — use Apple Pencil or S Pen directly in the puzzle editor with pressure-aware routing between value and note modes
- Shuffle — apply random transformations to your custom puzzle while preserving its logical structure
Power Notes
A faster way to manage candidates. When Power Notes is active, selecting a cell with a focused digit automatically applies the note action — no second tap needed. Available for exclude, highlight, and manual note modes, with an option to retain or clear selection after applying.
Technique Caching
The engine now caches technique scan results in a background worker thread. Once calculated, scan results and technique peeking are instant — no waiting for repeat analysis of the same position.
Focus and Strong Links
- Anchor digits — long-tap a digit in focus or strong link mode to anchor it as an overlay, then swipe the keyboard to flick through combinations: vertical swipes cycle anchored digits, horizontal swipes cycle focus or strong link digits — great for quickly scanning digit pairs or spotting hidden patterns
- Show All Links — reveal every conjugate connection for the focused digit at once
Hints
- Improved hint explanations with reasoning and conclusion text
- Finned fish now display fin-to-vertex link edges for clearer visualisation
- Generalised diagonal link rendering for all fish sizes (X-Wing through Jellyfish)
- Technique count badge on the Scan toolbar button
Collections
- Difficulty sub-groups within each collection for more targeted practice
- Puzzle shuffling — deterministic random transformations keep familiar puzzles feeling fresh
- Restart completed levels to keep practising
- Progress bars on difficulty and collection cards
UI Polish
- Crosshatch highlighting — solved cells now show crosshatch patterns when selected
- Completion progress bar — track your progress at a glance in the game status bar
- Error count shown on the completion dialog
- Radial menu decoupled from cell selection for smoother stylus workflows
- Interactive tutorial steps now show finger hint animations
- Improved right-to-left language support in grid coordinates and projected spaces