Whispered Shadows

Note: This is updated to reflect the App’s current version.

Ever since I had my old Palm Treo 650, my first requirement when I had any handheld device was a game of Sudoku. Same thing goes for my new iPhone.

Scouring the App Store uncovered dozens of Sudoku games for a range of prices, but none were free. I looked through the reviews and found one that seemed to have an overall good review by the users: Satori Sudoku. Most of the reviewers said it had a pretty good interface, better than the other sudoku apps out at the time. For only $1.99 I was willing to give it a shot.

Upon loading it up, the game seemed everything I wanted. Easy to use, clear to read, I was ecstatic. The ability to make pencil marks was mandatory, the highlight feature quite nice, and the verify was ok except for the fact you could only do that once you were done. Do wish that it would take all your current ‘finished’ numbers and check them, rather than just making sure the puzzle itself is ok.

Overall I was quite pleased.

That is.. until I tried to finish a puzzle.

You see, there is a trick to creating Sudoku puzzles. It’s not as easy as you might think. Initial thought says to just take a completed puzzle and remove a bunch of numbers. Sadly that can’t be done. Why? Because if you are not careful which numbers are left over then you can have multiple solutions to a puzzle. Take a look at the screencap above (click to see full size). Look very carefully. Yep, that puzzle can be completed in any number of ways. That is a ‘broken puzzle’. The whole point of Sukoku is that there is only a single logical answer.

Obviously the maker of Satori Sudoku didn’t understand this and implemented puzzle creation poorly. Literally every puzzle I’ve tried to finish since I bought the game have ended up like the one above. My hope is that now that people are complaining about it that the creator will update the application with a better puzzle generation algorithm.

UPDATE: Ok, The developer of the game pushed through an update on the App Store and the puzzle generator now seems like it is fixed. IMHO this is now the best Sudoku App avaliable. I read an article over on MacWorld about all the Sudoku apps, and looking it over I still think Satori is the best. The only thing wrong with it was the broken puzzles and now that is fixed.