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Comment by y-curious | Hacker News Reader

Yes: No pencil tool, no active checking. Also, you should trickle free hints at people instead of forcing an ad click, that's how you get 'em.

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Thanks! A pencil tool should be straightforward to add. Do people usually use a stylus for these purposes? Someone else mentioned the ads, I can easily embed some mechanism to remove them.

You can keep ads, but the sudoku app I use gives you a few hints for free, first.

Pencil tool is usually a toggle- you default to `pen` but toggle `pencil` mode to fill them out. Look at the top android sudoku app's implementation, it's slick.

That's helpful, thanks so much!

What type of hints are most useful from your POV? Are they more direct (i.e. here's a free box in case you are stuck), or more suggestive (e.g. "Pay attention to the naked pair in the third grid")?

With the latter, striking a nice balance between hints which are simple to articulate without esoteric terminology is important.

Really appreciate the pencil mode pointer, I'll check it out.

I finally got around to this. Here's a screenshot of how the new "pencil mode” looks in the latest version of the live app.

https://i.imgur.com/QrSqNwH.png

By tapping the same box twice, pencil mode is activated. You can enter any placeholders you like in the box.

Tapping the box again disables pencil mode, and the inputs you placed will remain in the background if you need to refer back.

Honestly, look at Cracking the Cryptic's app. It's all hand generated puzzles so it's much more expensive, but their app is definitely the best.

Thanks, I will take a look. Really appreciate the suggestion.

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