Sudoku is now in the App Store
Sudoku is live. A calm, distraction-free logic puzzle for iPhone and iPad — free, with no ads, no tracking, and no subscription. If you would like to support the work, there is an optional tip jar inside the app. Nothing else asks for your money or your attention.
The first release is built around a single idea: a Sudoku you can sit down with and just play. The board is the loudest thing on screen. Everything else stays out of the way until you reach for it.
What this version is about
Three things in this first version are worth calling out.
Challenge Mode
When you want to put your skills to the test, switch it on. Hint, Check, and Show are disabled, wrong entries are flagged immediately, and three mistakes end the game. The rest of the time, you can play with as much or as little help as you like.
Pencil notes that scale with the board
Pencil mode is one tap away. The notes sit directly inside each cell, at a size that stays readable from the iPhone 17e all the way up to the 13-inch iPad — no zooming, no squinting, no separate “candidates” panel.
iCloud-synced settings
Your difficulty, appearance, and game preferences travel with you across your iPhones and iPads, kept in your private iCloud. The game you are in the middle of solving stays on the device you started it on, so a second device never overwrites your work.
Everything else — five difficulty levels from Simple to Expert, the Hint, Check, and Show controls, the built-in strategy guide from Naked Singles up to Forcing Chains, light and dark mode, German and English — is laid out in detail on the Sudoku help page.
What this blog will cover
I would like this blog to be a quiet companion to the app rather than a marketing channel. A few directions I have in mind:
- Why a word matters — a short post on why the app says “pencil notes” and not “pencil marks”, and what changed when I made the switch.
- Designing for the smallest iPhone — how the board fits on a 393-point screen without compromising the digit pad or the controls.
- One technique at a time — plain-language write-ups of the named solving techniques (Hidden Pair, X-Wing, Swordfish), built on the same explanations that live inside the app.
If there is something you would like to read about, the Contact page is the place to ask.
Get it
Sudoku is free on the App Store. Tap the badge below to install it.
