▻Sudoku +

This is the version of Sudoku I play the most. There is another Sudoku game that is better in that it has many more features and a superb teaching feature, however, I still find, out of the dozen or so Sudoku games I've got, that this s the one I pull up first. The only irritant is the lack of a choice to pull up an auto fill of candidates. Instead you have to put them all in by hand which is just tedious. I'm not asking for any hints, just reduce the tedium of filling them in by hand. But despite that this is still the one!

I’ve been playing Finger Arts’ free-version of Sudoku for well over a year now. I love it. I play it multiple times each and every day. The interface is clean. The app offers seven different skins, all nice. When I started playing Finger Arts’ Sudoku 2, they did not offer an ad-free version. It was only because I was showing the app to a friend, that I went to the About screen and saw the Ad-free link for the first time. Finger Arts does a fairly good job of keeping the ads from being too distracting, but I’m glad to have paid for an ad-free version. Only complaint, my stats from the free version did not carry over to the paid version. I had an 843 game streak at the Expert level.

Rotation lock clears every time the phone is unlocked or the app is background(it seems) because I never clear it and it is clear a lot. It should be persistent. Games will just end in the middle occasionally just locking and unlocking the phone. Not as buggy as the latest version of the free version though. That one just crashes randomly now. Probably when pulling new add content. All that said, still one of the cleanest Sudoku designs out there. I have played quite a few. Still this one is my favorite. Simple, concise, no frills or nonsense. Good layout and user interaction. I just wish it wasn’t so buggy.

I love this app, my only addition would be an option for a second color of pencil that is stored separately, where you can toggle between the two. Alternatively, it could be a mode where you stop tracking mistakes but set a ‘restore point’ when you start. Both options would allow a little more freedom to experiment with possible solutions in expert puzzles where the solution can be unclear until you go a bit into a possible path.

Don't get me wrong, this is a well written Sudoku app. But there are better ones in the App Store. Faults: Entering pencil marks (almost required at the "hard" and "expert" levels) is slow & tedious! HUGE gap in difficulty between hard and expert levels. Once pencil marks are completely entered in, the hard level "solves itself" rarely requiring "advanced" techniques. Jump to the Expert level, and advanced techniques are required, but difficult when only 6 pencil marks are shown at a time. "Perfect" scores mean nothing! Allowing mistakes encourages a kind of cheating... I have over 50 expert wins, but when I've been in a hurry, I just guess on a number where I've narrowed the possibilities down to 2 numbers... If I'm wrong, I get a mistake, but I now know the correct number, and it's usually enough to finish the puzzle with a "perfect" score... I keep this on my iPad because it's a great Sudoku for beginners, and my kids like the interface. But I will move on to other better apps.