AppCraver » Suduko

NineGaps Has Your Daily Numbers

Michael Alexander — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:00:03 +0000

Quadion Technologies’ NineGaps is in some ways like Sudoku, the number puzzler that bookkeepers, Mensa wannabes and violinists seem to enjoy more than everyone else. NineGaps is different than Sudoku in that you complete puzzles consisting of three rows and three columns. You have to figure out basic math problems to arrive at the right spot for each square (you can only use each number between 0 and 9 once).

Not many people have missed the fan wave for Sudoku-style puzzles, but in case you have, the idea is to place numbers in squares on a grid so they add up in all directions without your repeating any number. If you still don’t get it, do a search through a newspaper, magazine, Web site… Sudoku puzzles are everywhere.

Quadrion’s NineGaps’s interface clean and inviting, although the graphics echo those of colored-pencils drawings. You enter numbers, depicted as colorful paper cutouts, by dragging them to the appropriate square. You can change them by dragging another number over them.

You can reset a game with a button tap in NineGaps. It would have been cool to reset this game with motion control. Shake it, and away the numbers would go.

NineGaps comes in Easy to Hard flavors. In the Easy mode, for example, you have fewer numbers to deal with and some squares are already filled in. At the hardest level, you have to do all the “cypherin’ yerself” as Jethro says (he’s a character from The Beverly Hillbillies for you uncultured types).

If you enter a number into a square, and it’s the wrong place for it, NineGaps will give you a “wah-wah” to let you know you should try a different number.

If you get the hang of it well, you might want to play against the clock. Yawn.

I’m teasing. NineGaps will appeal to calculator punchers, I’m sure. It’s not my drink of choice but I’m more right than left brain. I gave it to my wife to play (an accounting manager) and she couldn’t put it down.

app_name: NineGaps
rating: 8/10

CatDoku: Cat Sudoku has Nine Cats But Not Nine Lives

Tracy Rodgers — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 02:30:55 +0000

CatDoku – Cat Sudoku, created by James Thomson and presented by ELogicPuzzles, is exactly what you think it is: a version of the popular logic game Sudoku, using cats instead of numbers.

In case you’ve somehow missed out on Sudoku, the concept is fairly simple. You begin with a field of squares — nine large squares, each of which is subdivided into nine smaller squares (with is also how CatDoku is designed). In each of the larger squares, the digits 1-9 appear, with no repeats. Additionally, the digits 1-9 appear in every row and column, also without repeating. Puzzles can be more or less difficult, depending on how many numbers are provided at the start.

The difference, of course, is that while Sudoku uses numbers, CatDoku uses photos of cats. Nine of them, obviously, to replace the digits 1-9. So, instead of using logic to correctly place numbers, you are instead charged with correctly placing images of cats, with each larger square holding photos of all nine cats, and each row and column also having all nine cats in it. CatDoku is easy to understand, whether you’ve played Sudoku before or not.

The problem with CatDoku, however, is that while everyone knows the numbers 1-9, not everyone is intimately acquainted with the kitties in question. The photos of the cats are, by necessity, small, and when you’ve got a square with seven cats filled in, it’s really not that easy to figure out which are missing. I found myself going “OK, I have the black cat. Now…what else? Do I have that one awkward-looking cat? There he is. No, that’s a different one. Is it the kind of mousey-looking cat I’m missing? Or what about the one who looks kind of like an Ewok?” It got old really fast. Maybe if there were numbers in addition to the cats, it might work better. Or even if they had names on them, so I could know I needed “Cookie” and “Doctor” as opposed to “the sort of smushy-looking one.”

The graphics in CatDoku are also pretty basic. The splash screen is downright ugly, with a really poorly Photoshopped cat face and some vaguely blurry text. On the plus side, the game works well, and once you complete a puzzle, you can choose to have your score uploaded and compared against other players’.

Overall, CatDoku is a cute idea (I love cats as much as the next girl) that doesn’t quite cut it. As a free app, it might be worth checking out, but I’m not sure it’s worth $0.99. Stick with regular Sudoku get your kitty fix elsewhere.

app_name: CatDoku
rating: 5/10

ACTSudoku – Friendliest Sudoku App Yet

Andrew Portela — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:30:46 +0000

For the uninitiated, sudoku is a number-based puzzle game that requires using the numbers 1 through 9 to fill a 9×9 grid in a precise manner. There are plenty of sudoku apps out there that supply a puzzle for to you solve and that’s it. What most sudoku applications don’t have is the ability to teach you to play. ACTSudoku not only gives you a puzzle to play, but can teach the tricks to solving a puzzle that the everyday sudoku player may not know.

ACTSudoku is by far the friendliest sudoku app that I have reviewed to date. Just like every other sudoku application, ACTSudoku gives you the option to choose the difficulty level from easy to hard. Again, just like every other sudoku application, it allows you to suspend the puzzle and finish it at another time. This is where the similarities stop.

The settings page gives you the ability to turn on and off features to your liking. The help section is much superior to any sudoku application I have seen. It gives you sudoku basics as well as solving techniques and ACTSudoku instructions. Inside the solving techniques, they show you different ways of finding numbers to help you solve to puzzle. This is something that I had to spend time learning through trial and error — usually by doing puzzles and see what works and what doesn’t. It also comes with support via email so if you’re having any trouble with the application, you can easily shoot the developers an email to get your problem solved.

The one thing that brought down the rating for ACTSudoku is that it wasn’t very intuitive. It was tough to understand what was going on with the board at the start. I actually had to go back to the first page and read the instructions. It may not sound like a big deal, but I’ve been playing sudoku for a long time and I’m usually far beyond the “read the manual” stage.

Other than that, ACTSudoku is the most adequate application I have ever seen. With the tips and techniques, it’s a good app to start with if you want to learn sudoku. Just make sure you read the instructions.

app_name: ACTSudoku
rating: 8/10

Sudoku Guru Leads the Way Toward Number Nirvana

Andrew Portela — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:30:15 +0000

The modern game of sudoku was developed in the end of the 1970’s and garnered a large following in Japan during the 80’s where it got it’s name Sudoku, meaning single number. Sudoku became popular world wide somewhere in 2005. The game of Sudoku is a number puzzle that, in order to solve, must have all the column, rows, and each of the nine 3×3 boxes filled with the numbers 1 through 9.

Not the first Sudoku application to make it to the iPhone, but the Sudoku Guru is by far the best I have seen yet. Sudoku Guru is very simple to follow and you can get playing right away. It offers you 5 different levels of playing starting with the easiest being apprentice, then moving on to intern, then practitioner, then master, and finally, guru. Something that I think is great is something that you don’t usually get to do, which is build your own custom game. What I mean by this is Sudoku Guru supplies you with an empty board and allows you to create your own sudoku puzzle and challenge your friends.

Right off the bat you can start solving puzzles. And, with the ability to save a game, Sudoku Guru allows you to start a puzzle during your morning commute on the train and finish it later in the day. Do you want to see how your doing at Sudoku and see how you are progressing? Sudoku Guru supplies you with a statistics page that gives you your best time ever as well as the time it took you to complete your last puzzle. It also supplies you with a help page to explain to you, in detail, everything about the application.

There are two tiny, little things that I didn’t like. One would be that they supply you with penciled in numbers that show what numbers are available for use in each box. Personally, I found them very distracting, but it is easily shut off in the options section. Also they have a background noise that I believe was meant to be relaxing, but it’s just another distraction. Again, it is easily shut off in the options menu.

With that said, Sudoku Guru still first place on my list of best Sudoku apps.

app_name: Sudoku Guru
rating: 9/10

Sudoku (Free) Adds up to Good Times

Andrew Portela — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 21:30:27 +0000

Sudoku has been a favored pastime for newpaper-gamers for a long time. Usually right next to the crossword, it offers a game of numbers that is easier to conquer. For those of you who don’t know what sudoku is, it involves 9 large boxes which has another 9 boxes inside each large box. The trick of the game is that you have to get the numbers 1 through 9 in each large box as well as each column and row of the entire board. Sounds complicated, but it’s really a simple concept once you understand it.

Sudoku (Free) brings the game to you at anytime — not just when you have a newspaper. Sudoku is a perfect game for the morning train commute or any free time that you find yourself with nothing to do. This application offers a variety of difficulty levels: easy, medium, hard, and expert. If you’re stumped, there is a hint button that gives you a number to try and help you along. Sudoku (Free) also offers handcrafted puzzles that come in different color assortments and three different styles: standard, symmetrical, and patterned.

Let’s talk about the downfalls and it should be fast because I only have one. And that is that when you place a number into the wrong box it tells you right away by turning the number red. You can shut this off in the option’s panel. But, as a sudoku purists, I don’t think it should be an option because it defeats the whole point of the game.

Sudoku (Free) has done a great job bringing sudoku to the iPhone and iPod Touch and gives everyone a chance to play it anytime they want. Forget the newspaper or sudoku book and save your money. Go download Sudoku (Free).

app_name: Sudoku(Free)
rating: 9/10