One per row and column
Every row has exactly one sun, and so does every column.
catch the sun
One sun in every row, every column and every colour.
And no two suns may touch, not even at a corner. It takes a minute to learn and a long time to master: 1,100 puzzles that start in seconds and climb to boards that would make a sudoku black belt sweat. You never have to guess.
- 1,100puzzles
- 3new every day
- 0guesses needed
How to play
Four rules. That is the whole game.
One per colour
A board has as many colours as it has rows, and each colour gets exactly one sun.
No touching
Suns never sit next to each other, not even diagonally. Edges and corners of the board are fine.
Cross off, then place
Tap to cross a square off, double-tap to place a sun. A sun in the wrong square turns into a red ✕. No lives, no game over.
Try it: a thirty-second lesson
This is the walkthrough the app opens with. Four colours, four suns, and the three ideas that open every board: a colour with one square, a sun clearing its row, column and colour, and the no-touching rule doing the rest.
Every puzzle in the game works this way. There is always a next move you can prove.
Play free
Five puzzles. No download.
These play exactly like the app: the same boards, the same moves, the same hints. They start with the very first board and end on a Mini that fights back.
- Tapcross a square off, and again to clear it
- Double-tapplace a sun
- Dragcross off a whole row or column
- Press and holdlight a square up while you think
- Hintthe next step, explained in words
- Undoas far back as you like
Your progress stays in this browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.
The puzzles
1,100 puzzles in eleven sets of a hundred.
Every set runs from its easiest board to its hardest, so the next one always asks a little more than the last. Four worlds, one for every mood.
Classic
Sunrise · Corona
Where everyone starts. Sunrise opens with boards you will finish in seconds and builds to full-size 11×11s. Corona puts every colour against a small core at the centre, with no free openings, ever.
Mini
5×5 · 6×6 · 7×7
Small boards with no obvious way in. Bite-sized and fierce, a hundred of each size, climbing all the way to swordfish and X-wings at the top.
Extreme
6×6 · 7×7 · 9×9
The hundred hardest boards we could find at each size, every one harder than 99.99% of what our generator makes. No gentle opener, no easy stretch, no let-up.
Special
Patterns · Pictures · Blocks
Boards set by hand. Patterns draw squares inside squares, stripes that unzip and pinwheels. Pictures draw islands, quilts and a sunrise. Blocks breaks the one rule you thought you knew: a colour can be in three places at once.
And something new every day
An Easy, a Medium and a Hard daily puzzle, each with its own leaderboard. On Fridays, First to Fifty: seven boards back to back, fifty suns, one race.
Difficulty
Gentle start. Brutal finish. Never a guess.
Calibrated to climb
The first boards take seconds. Each one after asks a little more, until you are holding three colours and three lines in your head at once. Every board carries stars, so you know what you are walking into.
Logic all the way down
Every puzzle has exactly one answer, and every one was solved start to finish by an engine that only knows ideas a person can learn. If it would ever have needed a guess, the board was thrown away. So there is always a next move you can prove.
Moves borrowed from sudoku
The hardest boards ask for the classics. X-wings and swordfish carry straight over from sudoku, because one sun per row is the same rule as one digit per row.
The ladder
Eleven ideas, from the one you will use on your first board to the ones that stop experts. The hints teach every one of them, in this order.
- Last square in a colourA colour has one square left.
- Last square in a lineA row or column has one square left.
- Colour claims a lineEverything a colour has left sits in one line, so that line is its.
- Line claims a colourEverything left in a line is one colour, so that colour is spent there.
- SqueezeWherever a colour, row or column puts its sun, one square dies either way.
- Two-set lockoutTwo colours stuck inside the same two lines, so nothing else fits.
- Three-set lockoutThe same, with three.
- Four-set lockoutThe same, with four.
- ReachA square that none of a unit's last squares touches, ruled out from a distance.
- X-wing from sudokuTwo rows whose last squares fall in the same two columns.
- Swordfish from sudokuThe same, with three rows and three columns.
Rated on real solves
A board's stars are not a guess either. Each rating is built from the board's own proven solve: how much work every step takes, how few moves are on offer when you need one, how often you are stuck with nothing that places a sun, and how much a sharper order of moves would save.
We fitted those measures to more than 4,500 timed solves, with a statistical model that tells how hard a board is apart from how quick its player is, then checked it against puzzles it had never seen.
- 4,500+timed solves behind the ratings
- 1,100boards, each proven solvable by logic
- Top 0.01%of the boards our generator makes: the Extreme sets
Hints and the coach
Stuck? The game explains itself.
Hints that teach, not tell
A hint never just fills in a square. It works out the real next step from your board as it stands, with the same logic that proved the puzzle, and tells you in plain English: which idea, which squares force it (they glow) and what it clears.
Tap the hint for the full reasoning, or double-tap it to have the move made for you. Watch this one work through a real board.
The Coach
Unlocked at 100 solves
Once you can solve, the coach helps you solve better. It looks at any board three ways:
- Easiest
- helps you learn: one simple idea at a time.
- Fastest
- helps you play faster: the quickest way to each next sun.
- Review My Solve
- goes back over every move you made, scores your solve as a percentage of optimal, and shows where a faster move was waiting.
A look inside
Made for a phone in one hand.
Badges and rewards
54 badges, and plenty worth earning.
Badges for streaks, sets, speed and style, a few of them secret. Many unlock something: a new face for your suns, a new mark, a sky behind the board, a whole new palette.
- 🌅DaybreakYour first daily puzzle
- 🔥Ten-Day BlazeA ten-day daily streak
- 🌄Triple SunriseAll three dailies in one day
- 🐟Sun on the WaterTen boards that need a fish
- 🧼SpotlessFifty levels beaten clean
- 🔥Trial by FireAll three Mini sets
- 🌞Every Last SunEvery level in the game
- ?SecretEight of them. Good luck.
Suns
Sunflower, Paper Lantern, Crescent Moon, Sea Star, Candle, Compass Rose, Eclipse, Disco Ball and the Gilded Sun.
Marks
Pebble, Tally, Hairline and Hatch, for the squares the sun is not in.
Skies
First Light
Small Hours
Aurora
Supernova
Slow, quiet skies that hang behind the board.
Colours
Dusk, Ember and Noon: the whole board in a new light.
The Coach at 100 solves
The easiest line, the fastest line, and your own solves reviewed move by move.
Level Builder at 200 solves
Ask for a puzzle: the size, the difficulty, and the ideas it must need. It is made to order, proven by the same logic as every other board.
Catch the sun.
Sunoku is coming soon to the App Store for iPhone.
Coming soonto the App Store
Play the free puzzles