Sudoktor for Android

I have reached the point in my Sudoku journey where a lot of puzzles are not quite hard enough. Sudoktor has fiendish puzzles which are challenging enough for me. I like that Sudoktor will calculate and continuously update possible candidates for me, I can do this for myself but honestly it's a tedious unchallenging part of solving a puzzle. One element of Sudoktor which as far as I am aware is unique, is the user interface it uses when entering either your guess or a pencil mark. You select the cell you want to work with and the display pops up a larger square containing the values that you may choose. The really clever part of this is that it represents pencil marks as small digits and guesses as large digits. This feature has once and for all ended the problem of accidentally entering a guess instead of a pencil mark because it is obvious which you are about to do. I also like very much the ability to import and export puzzles, other apps have this but Sudoktor seems to go one step further and allow many options for import and export format. The analysis feature is interesting, it's not just on or off, you can select the type(s) of analysis that you want the program to use. I find ths helpful as a learning aid when stuck. The display shows exactly what your next move should be and more importantly shows you why. You can see the explanation on the actual puzzle you are working on. All in all Sudoktor is a step ahead of any other Sudoku app I have seen.

I remember making a “map” of sudoku puzzles just like the layout of this app where the immediate possibilities are shown for the the yet unknown positions probably 15 years ago when I had time to kill and absolutely HAD to solve the sudoku in the paper! And it doesn’t seem to appear in other apps! The input is simple but powerful in that you can put in a series of numbers and it reads it like a charm! I made a mistake in my first input and how the program reformats the raw number input is beautiful in its simplicity without needing to go in and out of input boxes and how it can reformat it into a very readable layout is fabulous! I haven’t tried out turning off analysis mode features mentioned in the other review, but turning off where it makes the correct answer red makes it maybe a bit too easy. I do like where it highlights the boxes in yellow though. I’m a programmer myself and I appreciate good engineering and this is pretty fabulous!

I’ve been enjoying sudoku on my Android for several years now and never seem to tire of playing. I downloaded Sudoktor after finding a puzzle in a magazine I wanted to tackle, because my original app does not allow me to enter a puzzle myself. This app is very powerful, but still allows you to control just how much help you want. You can “go it alone” or ask for guidance. This has encouraged me to learn more about the complex logic behind eliminating incorrect candidates. It’s like discovering a whole new game.