LINE VARIANTS, TOLD APART AT A GLANCE Region Sum and Entropic lines used to render as nearly the same color, which made a board carrying both genuinely hard to read. Every line variant now sits on an evenly spaced color ramp and carries its own dash pattern — solid, dashed, dotted or dash-dotted — so two lines are never separated by color alone. They stay tellable apart on a dimmed screen, or if you're colorblind. HINTS THAT MATCH THE BOARD Hints and rules cards now describe a line the way it is actually drawn: "This cell sits on the pink dashed Region Sum line." The wording is generated from the colors on screen, so it follows a theme change instead of going stale. A WIDER DAILY The daily rotation now draws from the full 2.0 variant fleet. XV and Kropki dailies can combine their flavors, and the negative constraint reaches rotation for the first time — the pill strip tells you when unmarked pairs are constrained too. FIXED Five Killer variant pairings took longer to generate than the nightly run allows, which could leave a daily silently unpublished. Those pairings are out of the rotation.

Sudoku Mashup 2.0 — the biggest update yet. FOURTEEN NEW VARIANTS Arrow, Sandwich, Magic Square, Battenburg, Renban, German Whispers, Between Lines, Zipper Lines, Region Sum Lines, Entropic Lines, Modular Lines, Parity Lines, Ten Lines, and Twelve Lines. Every one ships with a playable intro puzzle and its own rules card, and each line variant has a distinct color so overlapping lines stay readable. New-variant packs and dailies roll out over the coming weeks. FASTER WHERE IT COUNTS Found and fixed the true cause of the mid-play stall when placing or erasing pencil marks — auto-save was freezing the game for a beat, and it grew worse the more puzzles you'd ever played. Saves are now split per puzzle, so saving stays instant no matter the size of your collection, and the board renders at your screen's full refresh rate while you're actively tapping. REMEMBERED, EVERYWHERE Undo history is now saved for every in-progress puzzle — switch between puzzles freely and each keeps its full trail. The killer-cage combos calculator remembers everything across restarts: digit filters, crossed-off combos, and your A/B/C slots. RULES CARDS STATE THE RULE Every variant's rules card now tells you just the rule — the deductions are yours to make.

The 1.6 series makes a growing puzzle library easier to navigate — and the app quicker and tidier. FIND THE RIGHT PACK FASTER The Packs screen has two new filters. Show only the packs you've installed — or only the ones you haven't yet — and hide the packs you've already finished, so a long collection stays easy to browse for your next puzzle. A TIDIER HOME The home screen is calmer: the guided lessons now live in a single Learn card, without the extra floating reminder. A QUICK WAY TO RATE Enjoying Sudoku Mashup? A new "Rate it" row in Settings jumps straight to the App Store review page — no pop-ups, just there when you want it. SNAPPIER PENCIL MARKS Fixed a brief delay that could make placing pencil marks feel laggy — taps now register instantly.

The 1.5 series brings guided learning, smarter help, and sharper, faster solving tools. LEARN, HANDS-ON New guided lessons teach sudoku from the ground up — row, column and box basics, pattern techniques like the X-Wing, thermometers, and boards where variants stack. Every lesson is hands-on: you pencil the candidates, erase the ones a pattern rules out, and place the digit it proves. Finish the last lesson and jump straight into a beginner classic to put it to work. SMART HINT Stuck? Tap Smart Hint and the game finds the next technique the board is actually asking for — it names the technique, highlights the cells in play, then spells out the exact move. It works across every variant, and reveals a single cell when there's no clean next step, so you're never truly stuck. When rules overlap — Non-Consecutive meeting XV or Kropki — the rules sheet now flags where they collide, nudging you toward what each marker can be. PENCIL MARKS, YOUR WAY Load the digits you want (say 2, 4, 6, 8), then press-and-hold a cell to set its candidates to exactly those — overwrite a cell's marks in one gesture. With Multi on, a hold lays every loaded digit across the board at once. And you can now give each pencil layer its own color: set separate shades for your top, center, and bottom marks per theme, while the layers you're not working in gently dim so the active one stands out (Settings → Appearance). COLOR & HIGHLIGHTS The color highlighter's radial menu previews your full set of staged colors, and a long-press lays them all down at once with Multi-color on. The radial number picker previews matching same-digit cells as you aim, with a haptic tap. PLAY YOUR WAY Prefer to solve without a clock? New settings let you hide the in-game timer and the times shown in menus — your solve times are still recorded, so it's purely about what you see. SMOOTHER ON BUSY BOARDS Pencilling stays smooth even on the most crowded boards. Adding or clearing a candidate no longer redraws the whole grid, so dense puzzles and variant boards packed with marks keep up as you fill them in. POLISH & FIXES • When two line rules share cells — like a palindrome and a thermometer — both now show as nested bands instead of one painting over the other, so you can still trace each. • Guided lessons float their prompt over the board instead of shrinking it, and stay clear of the notch on newer iPhones. • The grid frame no longer drew off the screen edge on variants with longer names. • Solved puzzles keep their final time when you reopen them; restarting still counts from zero. • Palindrome puzzles no longer mis-highlight a line's cells or hide a digit a mirrored cell needs. • Fixed the Combos calculator popping open when you tapped a Killer cage with the Delete tool selected. • Fresh boards no longer open with the top-left cell pre-selected. • The Packs browser's variant filter now works, and its filter menu reads more cleanly.

The 1.5 series brings guided learning, smarter help, and sharper solving tools. LEARN, HANDS-ON New guided lessons teach sudoku from the ground up — row, column and box basics, pattern techniques like the X-Wing, thermometers, and boards where variants stack. Every lesson is hands-on: you pencil the candidates, erase the ones a pattern rules out, and place the digit it proves. Finish the last lesson and jump straight into a beginner classic to put it to work. SMART HINT Stuck? Tap Smart Hint and the game finds the next technique the board is actually asking for — it names the technique, highlights the cells in play, then spells out the exact move. It works across every variant, and reveals a single cell when there's no clean next step, so you're never truly stuck. FASTER PENCIL WORK In pencil mode, load the digits you want (say 2, 4, 6, 8), then press-and-hold a cell to set its candidates to exactly those digits — overwrite a cell's marks in one gesture. PLAY YOUR WAY Prefer to solve without a clock? New settings let you hide the in-game timer and the times shown in menus — your solve times are still recorded, so it's purely about what you see. POLISH & FIXES • Guided lessons now float their prompt over the board instead of shrinking it, and stay clear of the notch on newer iPhones. • The grid frame no longer drew off the screen edge on variants with longer names. • Solved puzzles keep their final time when you reopen them; restarting still counts from zero. • Palindrome puzzles no longer mis-highlight a line's cells or hide a digit a mirrored cell needs. • Fresh boards no longer open with the top-left cell pre-selected. • The Packs browser's variant filter now works, and its filter menu reads more cleanly.

This update rolls up four releases of solving upgrades: • Killer puzzles: tap inside a cage to open the Combos calculator, pre-set to that cage's size and total. Each cage keeps its own Must/Cannot picks and crossed-off combos. • Variant rules up front: opening a variant for the first time shows its rules sheet automatically (switch off in Settings → Gameplay → Help). • Pen·Auto, simplified: a cell down to a single pencil mark always resolves on tap — and no longer conflicts with Delete. • Restart now asks you to confirm, so an accidental tap can't wipe a solve. • Thermometer puzzles draw from longer, more varied thermo shapes. • Quads can now call for four matching digits. • Daily mashups now name every variant they include.