Support — Plain and Simple Games

Nine games in one app: Sudoku, Klondike solitaire, Five in Six, a daily crossword, Five Dice, Colour Sort, Parking Lot, Nonogram and Connect. No ads, nothing to buy, and nothing to download after you install it.

Do I need an account?

No. Open the app and play — every game and every feature works signed out, and your stats and half-finished puzzles are saved on the device either way.

Signing in with Apple does exactly one thing: it lets your games follow you to another device. If you only play on one, there is no reason to bother.

My games aren't showing up on my iPad

Check three things, in this order:

• Signed in on both? Settings in the app will say Saved to your iCloud when sync is on. If it says Saved on this device, that device isn't syncing yet.
• Same Apple Account on both devices? Sync goes through your own iCloud, so both devices have to be signed into the same one.
• iCloud Drive switched on? Settings → your name → iCloud → iCloud Drive.

Sync happens in the background and can take a minute. Opening the app on both devices while they're on Wi-Fi is the quickest way to make it catch up.

Is my data going to you?

No. There is no Plain and Simple server for it to go to.

If you sign in, your games are stored in your own private iCloud database — a part of your personal iCloud account that we cannot read. If you don't sign in, everything stays on the device. See the privacy page for the details.

Sudoku

The difficulty doesn't feel right. Difficulties here are worked out by solving the puzzle the way a person would and measuring how much work that took, rather than by counting how many numbers you start with. That means "Hard" should genuinely be harder than "Medium" — but it also means our Medium may not match another app's. If a difficulty feels consistently wrong, tell us; it's a number we can tune.

What does the hint do? The first press explains the next step in plain English — "in the top-left box, 7 can only go in one square." Press it again and it fills that square in. The first press is meant to teach you something; the second is for when you'd rather just get on with it.

Expert says there's no straightforward step. That's honest rather than a failure. Some Expert puzzles need you to try a digit and follow it through to see whether it works. There is always exactly one solution.

Five in Six

A real word wasn't accepted. The list has about ten thousand five-letter words but it isn't every word in English. Tell us the one it missed and we'll add it.

I can't tell the green from the yellow. You shouldn't have to. A letter in the wrong place also carries a heavy dark outline, and a letter that isn't in the word is sunk into the board and dimmed — so the board reads correctly in black and white. There's no colour-blind mode to find because there's nothing to switch on.

Where's today's word from? It's worked out from the date on your own device, so everyone gets the same word without the app asking a server. That also means it works with no signal at all.

Solitaire

A card won't move. Klondike's rules are strict: columns build downward in alternating colours, foundations build upward from the ace in one suit, and an empty column takes only a king. Tapping a card is usually quicker than dragging it — it goes home if it can, and otherwise finds itself a column.

It says there are no moves left. It only says that when there genuinely are none; it checks every legal move before saying so. Plenty of Klondike deals can't be won at all — around two in three at draw three. It isn't always you.

Crossword

Where do the puzzles come from? They're written by hand and ship with the app — a hundred of them at a time. Everyone gets the same five-by-five mini on the same day, worked out from the date on your own device.

Five Dice

I can't undo. That's the game. When a round goes badly you have to write it into one of the thirteen boxes anyway, including a nought into a box you were saving. Being able to take it back would remove the only hard decision in it.

Colour Sort

A pour didn't do what I expected. A pour moves the whole run of matching colour on top of a tube, not one band — so pouring three greens moves all three. Tipping a tube that's already a single colour into an empty one is refused, because it changes nothing except which tube things are in.

Undo costs a move. Otherwise a "fewest moves" figure would mean nothing.

I'm stuck. If the board genuinely has nothing left to do, it says so. If it hasn't said so, there is still a move.

Parking Lot

What is par? The fewest moves the lot can actually be solved in — worked out in advance and checked twice, rather than the best score somebody managed. So "fourteen moves, par eleven" means eleven is genuinely possible.

Undo costs a move here too, for the same reason.

The hint moved a car that seemed unhelpful. Hints only ever offer a move that's on a shortest solution. One that merely looked sensible would quietly make the puzzle longer.

Nonogram

How do I know a row is finished? Its numbers go grey when the squares you've filled match them. That only tells you something you could work out by counting — it never points at a square.

Crossing out squares. The Cross out tool marks squares you've worked out are blank. They're your own notes: being wrong in them costs nothing, and you never have to cross everything out to finish. Only filling in a square that shouldn't be counts as a mistake.

Am I told when I get one wrong? Only if Point out mistakes is on in Settings. With it off you find your own errors, which is how the puzzle works on paper.

Do I have to guess? No. Every picture in the app is checked to be solvable by reasoning about one row or column at a time. If you're stuck, there is a deduction available somewhere on the board.

Connect

I've joined every pair and it still isn't finished. Every square has to be covered too. That's the rule that makes it a puzzle — joining the pairs on their own usually has a dozen lazy answers. The counter at the top shows both: pairs joined, and squares filled.

I drew over another colour and it disappeared. Running a line into another colour cuts that one back to where you crossed it. That's deliberate, and it's how these games normally work — refusing to move instead makes the board feel stuck.

Undoing a wrong turn. Drag back along your own line and it rewinds. Starting again from a dot clears that colour completely.

Turning things off

Settings has switches for the clock, mistake highlighting, automatic pencil marks, draw-three solitaire, hard mode in the word game, and vibration. Your times are recorded whether the clock is showing or not.

Settings → Games hides any game you don't play from the home screen. Nothing is deleted — stats, streaks and half-finished boards all stay exactly where they were, and switching a game back on returns everything.

Deleting everything

• On this device: delete the app.
• From iCloud: Settings → your name → iCloud → Manage Account Storage → Plain and Simple Games → Delete Data.

We can't do it for you, because we can't reach it.

Getting in touch

help@plainandsimple.app — a real person reads it.

If you're reporting something that went wrong, the most useful things to include are which game, what you were doing, and whether it happens every time.