Version 1.19 has gone live in the App Store today. The main change is the addition of feedback to make it more transparent that the score is impacted when help is used.
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The changes in detail:

• If the help is used for solving a puzzle, feedback is shown to indicate the impact of the help on the time taken.
• The new feedback can be turned off in the settings, if players find it annoying (new settings option).
• Some changes to the way the use of help is applied to the score. The more time that a player spends studying a puzzle, the lower the cost of the help will be on the score.
• Points will always be scored for completing a puzzle, even if the help is used extensively.
• An options menu is now included on the score page that is shown after completing a puzzle in the Challenge Trail and Puzzle Sets. This allows the player to view the leaderboard and edit the settings from this page.
• More improvements to the help explanations.

Version 1.18 has gone live in the App Store today. This version makes pencil mode available to all players!

In previous versions, pencil mode was only available to Random Play players. This restriction has been removed, all players can now enable pencil mode in the settings.

​Please see the separate FAQ section on pencil mode for more details on this feature.

Other improvements in version 1.18:

• When a square with just one candidate value is tapped, the value is always set on the square. Previously, this was only being done if the square was in a row or a column which already had two blocks. This change will help to prevent squares from being filled by accident during the earlier stage of solving a puzzle, before all blocks have been placed.
• The (small) buttons for filling and clearing a square no longer cycle the state of the square when tapped repeatedly. So if a square already has the target state, they do nothing.

Version 1.17 has gone live in the App Store today. This version includes a fix for a problem where the sum combinations would sometimes overflow off the bottom of the screen and could not be scrolled into view (affected devices running iOS 15).

The sum combinations are now scaled to fit into the space available, so that scrolling is no longer necessary. When playing large puzzles on small devices, a side benefit is that the sum combinations will normally be displayed larger than they were before, except when there are a large number of combinations.

Other improvements in this release:

• Correction to the help explanation for the case of when not all blocks have been placed and a number only fits into one square.
• Better use of the screen space on an iPad mini (6th generation).

Version 1.16 has gone live in the App Store. This version provides the following small improvements:

• Added some extra logic to the Random Play puzzle generator to allow slightly trickier puzzles to be generated in all play modes.
• Fix for rare cases of the help not actually performing any changes (only affected Random Play in Expert play mode).
• Fix for text scaling issues when reporting Challenge Trail progress.

A new feature was introduced in version 1.14 that allows a Random Play puzzle to be generated for a selected size. In version 1.15, this has been extended to allow the skill level to be selected too. This version has gone live in the App Store today. The new option can be enabled in the Random Play settings, where bespoke puzzle generation is now a separate section.

This feature makes it possible for Random Play players to generate puzzles that are outside of their normal settings range, without having to adjust the settings in any way. For example, a player using Normal play mode may like to try a more difficult puzzle as a challenge, or an Expert player may like to solve an easier puzzle for a change, perhaps to ease the brain load!

Other changes in version 1.15:

• New leaderboard graphics, also used for puzzle set packs.
• Fix for pencil squares changing unexpectedly to number squares while pencil mode is in operation.
• Adaptions for iOS 15, to ensure a consistent look and feel with previous versions.

This version has been tested with devices running iOS 14 and iOS 15 and there are no known issues with either iOS version. However, if you encounter any problems that need fixing, please do not hesitate to report them via the contact form, thank you.

Version 1.14 has gone live in the App Store today. The puzzle generator is more cunning in this version! Specifically, new logic is sometimes used for generating the puzzles in the Advanced and Expert modes of Random Play. But don't worry, the help can always be relied on to provide assistance and explanations, if needed!

Other changes in version 1.14:

• Added the ability to select the size of the next puzzle in Random Play, instead of it being selected at random. The new buttons for this can be turned on in the settings.
• If the option to "show if sums add up correctly" is turned on in the settings, a row or column having more than two blocks is immediately shown as being incorrect.
• The help arrow remains visible (but dimmed) after help has been performed, to make it easier to cross-check the changes with the accompanying explanation.
• More measures to ensure a better mix of puzzles in Random Play.
• More improvements to analysis explanations (applies to Expert mode of Random Play).

This version brings some improvements to Random Play:

• Puzzles are now generated with more diversity. A new puzzle will usually differ in some way from the preceding puzzle, either in terms of size, or by the presence or absence of hidden sum values (as allowed by the settings).
• Better help explanations in cases where separate "Analysis" is shown (occurs only in Expert play mode).

New sections have been added to the FAQ to provide detailed information on pencil mode and leaderboards.

Version 1.12 of the app went live in the App Store on 23 August 2021. Here are the release notes:

This release is a return to normal look following the Summer Special edition. However, the extra free set of puzzles is still included and can be played until the end of August.
Also in this version:

• Improvements to pencil mode to make it easier to set and clear candidate values.
• More improvements to the help explanations.
• Attempted fix for occasional crashes that were reported as happening when closing the settings dialog.