Sudoku

Version: 1.32, 2010-03-16

Description

Play Sudoku on the go! Features:

• Random and manual game setup. Have Sudoku generate a random game for you, or enter games from newpapers and books, then play them later.
• Supports the 5-way rocker for selecting and editing cells.
• Supports direct keyboard editing of cells, designed for Treo computers.
• Immediately indicates illegal plays (may be turned off).
• Check function to indicate mistakes (compares your game against the solution).
• Logical solver with log to show you how games can be logically solved.
• Supports pencilling - tap in possible digits then later "set" your decision.
• Can automatically erase illegal pencilmarks.
• Pencilmarks can be selectively shown/hidden - great for figuring out complex patterns (such as Colouring), or simply seeing that single digit.
• Undetermined cells can be coloured, for manual use of the Colouring strategy.
• Save the state of a game so you can later back-up. Great for diabolical puzzles when there isn't always a logical play.
• Hint mechanism - have the game indicate a position that can be logically worked out. It can fill it in for you too (that's cheating!).
• Game timer shows how long you've been staring at your Palm's screen.
• Games can be beamed to other Palm computers.
• Games can be copied/pasted to/from the clipboard (eg to/from Memos).
• While the game is active, the auto-off timeout is lengthened to allow for more thinking time.

Tips

• The game auto-sets a digit as the solution if there is only one candidate digit left. In most cases that's what you want. For those times when it isn't, just tap the Undo button.
• Entering a zero turns all the pencilmarks on/off.

Requirements

• PalmOS 2.0 or later, 112KB.

Notes

PalmOS 2.0

PalmOS 2.0 doesn't support all the required display characters, so in places there will be squares. I have no intention of doing anything about that.

StyleTap

If you're using StyleTap, make sure you're using v0.9.070 or later, otherwise it will crash with the message "Unsupported system trap (0xA3AD) called".

Watchmaker

If you're using Watchmaker, make sure you're using v1.3.2 or later, as earlier versions blank the screen when the Palm switches off.

The Game Generator

The random game generator is very primitive. It tends to generate simple games, but occasionally jags a puzzle that requires advanced techniques. There is no difficulty categorization (yet!) - that tends to be extremely subjective, plus it would require implementation of many redundant solving strategies to determine the simplest techniques that could solve a puzzle (eg the Colouring strategy is very advanced, and special cases of it can be performed using different strategies). Think positively - every game will be a surprise!

The other problem with the generator is that it (unsurprisingly) takes a random amount of time to complete. It usually takes less than a minute, but on one occasion it took nearly half an hour!

Download

v1.11 and later have been changed to avoid conflicting with Teal Point's Sudoku Addict application. That change will result in two Sudoku icons appearing in the Launcher. The only way of deleting the duplicate icon is to manually delete the old copy of my Sudoku program. Use a utility such as Filez to list the internal databases and delete the database called "Sudoku". Don't delete "SudokuAGsu" (the new version of my Sudoku app) or "SudokuDB-AGsu" (your Sudoku games database). [Also, I now understand why I've been getting comments on the small size of my app!]

sudoku.zip (53771) Sudoku program (zipped)

Sudoku.prc (115028) Sudoku program (uncompressed PRC)

My Sudoku program is totally free. However, it is made largely of coffee and beer, which aren't free! The button below allows you to add to the coffee and beer fund (OK, it's really my slush fund). If you don't feel like donating, you can show your appreciation by sending comments via email or in my guestbook.

Third Party Downloads

Sudoku Importer by Blake Winton

The Sudoku Importer is a program which takes a set of Sudoku puzzles in a memo, and imports them all into my Sudoku application's game database.

Blake has also developed a Python script to download games from the web and output them in a text file.

Web Ring

Web Ring