Gauguin

Gauguin, by Meik Piepmeyer, is “a Sudoku-like game where you solve grids via calculation and logic.” As in Sudoku, each row and column contains every number once; on top of that, the grid is divided into cages, and the numbers in each cage must produce the target shown in its corner with the given operation. The puzzle type is best known from newspapers under the trademarked name KenKen; Gauguin doesn’t use that name.

The app grew out of older open-source versions of the same idea (see the questions below), and its name and colours come from Paul Gauguin’s painting The Siesta, which appears in the menu.

What you can set

• Grid size: width and height each from 3 to 11, so rectangular grids are possible too.
• Difficulty: very easy, easy, medium, hard and very hard. The project rates grids by generating 1,000 of each kind and calling the easiest and hardest 5% very easy and very hard; its notes say ratings exist so far only for square grids.
• Operations: all four, or only addition and subtraction, addition and multiplication, or multiplication alone.
• Unusual variants: number sets other than 1 to n (starting at 0, negative numbers, primes, Fibonacci numbers) and other number systems, from binary to hexadecimal.

Playing

• Tap a cell, then long-press a number button to enter it; a short press adds or removes it as a pencil mark.
• Help when you need it: show mistakes, reveal a cell or a cage, show the solution, or check whether a guess can work. Each one counts the game as solved with help.
• Fast Finishing Mode fills in the obvious last steps for you.
• Games save automatically when you leave, and you can save one with a comment and load it later. Statistics track solved games, streaks and times.
• Themes: Gauguin’s own colours, your phone’s dynamic colours, or monochrome, each in light or dark.

The store description admits one gap: there is no tutorial yet.

What it connects to

Nothing. Gauguin declares no permissions apart from one Android uses internally, so it has no internet access and no ads.

About this file

• This is the developer’s own build of version 0.53.3 (version code 80), signed by Meik Piepmeyer. F-Droid distributes the same developer-signed file; its metadata allows only that key.
• Version 0.53.0 redesigned the new-game screen as a vertically scrolling set of option cards and hid an unfinished statistics screen. Version 0.53.2 fixed an occasional crash when the new-game screen opened; 0.53.3 restores missing system-bar spacing around the controls at the bottom and side of the main screen, fixing three-button navigation.
• The 13.2 MB file has no native code and needs Android 7.0 or later. Our scan found no trackers.
• Gauguin is licensed under the GPL-3.0. It uses the Inter font, under the Open Font License, and The Siesta is a public-domain image from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Versions currently kept in the F-Droid repository. We host and check only the newest one. Full changelog.