Cracking The Cryptic

Sudoku. I’m surprised I haven’t posted any of these yet (other than Simon Tatham’s Puzzles, I suppose.)

This is basically an almost complete mobile version of Sven’s SudokuPad (Steam, Web) and it does a really good job at all the stuff that you need to tackle really tricky puzzles. While this specific app doesn’t allow for loading custom puzzles from whatever source, it does have a solid chunk of puzzles to start with. Unlike Tatham’s Puzzles, every puzzle in this game is hand-crafted by human puzzle-setters, rather than procedurally generated.

For those unaware, “Cracking The Cryptic” is actually the name of a YouTube channel, where they go through some sometimes brutally hard puzzles. Mostly sudoku, but sometimes other stuff too, so if you if you wanna see roughly what kind of puzzles you’d get with this game, that would be a good place to start. That being said, let me give a run down of some of the more common rules you’d see in this game.

  • Classic: This is just your regular sudoku rules, all the numbers 1-9 appear once in a row, column, and box, and you have to use the existing clues and logical deduction to find the unique solution.
  • Killer Cages: This is a rule where some cells belong to dotted cages, and there is a number along the border of the cage, usually in the top left, which tells you the sum of all the numbers inside the cage. Numbers usually can’t repeat inside a cage.
  • Kropki Dots: This is a rule where some pairs of cells have a dot between them. A white dot means that the two numbers are adjacent, like 5-6 or 1-2, and a black dot means that one number is double the other, so you could have 2-4 or 3-6, etc.
  • Thermo: This variant has some (usually grey) lines on the grid, with a bulb at one end. The smallest number on the line has to be on the bulb, and then the numbers have to increase as you go further away.
  • XV: Like kropki, this rule marks pairs of cells except cells with a V add up to 5, and cells with an X add up to 10, kinda like the roman numerals huh.
  • German Whispers: This variant has some (usually green) lines on the grid, where every adjacent number on the green line has to differ by at least 5, so you could have a line that goes 1 -> 7 -> 2 -> 9 -> 4.

And there are a bunch others.

My personal main gripes with this app is that its slightly slower to use than the PC versions of Sven’s SudokuPad, since you don’t have access to a shift key. Multiple selecting cells requires selecting the first cells you want, then clicking the “multiselect” button, before tapping other cells to select, and then when you’re done you have to turn multiselect back off again or itll continue to toggle cells instead of just selecting individual cells. You also can’t pencilmark letters or draw lines/boundaries. You can put an X in a cell, but only in a single colour.

The app itself is free and comes with 30 free puzzles in it. More puzzle packs are available for around £5 each, and give you another solid handful of puzzles, 60 in one pack 80 in another. There are 6 other sister apps which all have just one pack and specialise in a specific variant, but from what I’ve heard, they have slightly fewer marking tools than this one does, and those come at a premium rather than having paid packs. Hopefully they release the puzzles from those games as paid packs in this one.

Pro Tip: Start with the GAS packs. GAS stands for “Genuinely Approachable Sudoku”, so even though it’ll take a little bit of brain power to crack into them, it’s not like you’ll be spending 3 hours and hundreds of pencil marks and logic lines in order to deduce a single number.


Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.StudioGoya.CrackingTheCryptic Free to Play

This review isn’t sponsored lol, you really think I’m that important that people would wanna pay me?

While there is a steam version of this app specifically, it doesn’t hold a bat to Sven’s SudokuPad, and I can’t in good faith recommend it.


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