Sven's SudokuPad

Obviously if you have this app, you know cracking the cryptic. I find that most of the complaints are that there is only a limited set of puzzles (true) but since its more of an importer app for cracking the cryptic + a few puzzles, this isn’t really a problem. I’ve solved hundreds of puzzles because the UI for this app is just simply perfect. The fact that you have two versions of notes, you can color the boxes, you can highlight multiple numbers at the same time.. to die for! I’ve genuinely ely had no regrets buying this and have been using it for years lol. This is also my first app review (at least from what I remember) but I feel the need to review because I love love this app so much.

I saw the reviews, decided to try anyway because it’s the only Sudoku app I’ve seen that lets you create games. The problem is that with ever other Sudoku app, they let you mark down all possible numbers for any given spot. This is usually why I like Sudoku apps over pen and paper because I’m not marking up my pages just to keep track. This one, for whatever reason, doesn’t seem to have that? I don’t know if I just can’t find it or if it’s just not there, but I’m going to assume if they aren’t going to make it obvious how to find it, then it’s likely not there. If it’s added, then I would be all for it, buuut it somehow feels incredibly lacking for an app with a price point.

It gets 5 stars for being the only app of its kind on iOS to allow solving puzzles from all over the internet. Previously, I had a huge bookmark folder of puzzles I had to wait until I was on a desktop to solve, but now I can solve them on my phone, and that is a beautiful thing. Some suggestions: The process of cleaning up pencilmarks can be rather tedious, so auto-pencilmark elimination in row/column when placing digits would be a very nice feature to have as something that could be enabled in settings. Also, while long pressing on a cell highlight similar cells, it would be nice to be able to do this highlighting from the number pad with a long press. For example, if I wanted to highlight all cells with corner marked 5s, I could go to corner marks and hold the 5 button to do so. Currently, I have to have a corner marked 5 with no other corner marks to highlight just the 5s. Some sort of cloud syncing would also be nice so people could continue playing puzzles on different devices. Those features missing aside, this is still the best iOS app for solving sudokus and has earned all 5 of these stars until that stops being true. Edit: also auto-pausing the clock when switching apps would be good. There is some glitchy behavior with the clock in general, but I am not personally reliant on it.