Standard and Hard
Two boards a day, the same two for everyone, and a leaderboard that closes at midnight. Miss a day and a freeze can cover it. You earn one for every seven days in a row and can hold two.
Daily puzzle game
Four colors are always enough.
Color every node so that no two joined by a line ever match. It is never impossible, and it is rarely obvious. A new board arrives each morning, the same one for everyone.
Coming to the App Store and Google Play
Free to play · Pro is optional
The rule
One rule, and it never changes.
Two nodes joined by a line cannot share a color. Four are always enough, because every board is planar, and a planar map has never needed a fifth. That is a theorem, not a promise we are making.
▲ Amber
● Sky
■ Jade
◆ Orchid
Every color carries a shape, so the board stays solvable without relying on color at all.
Ways to play
The same rule, four different games.
Practice
Unlimited boards, untimed and unscored. Every tier is still four colors. What grows is how tightly the board is joined.
SeedTheoremProofAxiom
Duels
One duel at a time, the same puzzle for both of you, twenty-four hours to answer. Win, lose or draw goes into a history you can both read.
The archive
Past boards, playable whenever. Solving one leaves your streak exactly as it was. The archive is for catching up, and it cannot repair a run.
Cantle ProA second board every day on Hard, with its own streak and its own leaderboard. The full archive, back to day one. Any day you skipped, playable later without breaking your record. And the two densest tiers, Proof and Axiom, in practice and in duels. Pro is a subscription, monthly or yearly. Everything else is free, and there is no advertising anywhere.
Getting faster
Five things that shave seconds.
Pick the color, then tap
Tapping a node without choosing first cycles through all four. Select from the palette and each tap is one move instead of up to four. Long-press clears a node outright.
Start where it is tightest
Find the node touching the most others and color it first. Every neighbor it constrains is a decision you no longer have to make later.
Take the forced moves first
A node whose neighbors already show three different colors has exactly one color left. There is nothing to think about. Place it, then watch what it forces next.
Count the ring before you commit
A ring with an even number of nodes takes two colors, alternating. An odd ring always needs three, no matter how you arrange it. Counting first saves undoing later.
A clash is information
When two joined nodes match, the red ring is on the one you just placed. It tells you which decision to take back. Usually that is the one before it, not the one you are looking at.
The details
The things nobody tells you.
- Friend code
- Six characters. Share it, or scan someone else’s.
- Friends
- Up to 100. Ten friend requests a day.
- Nudges
- Ten a day, and one per friend per day. A nudge only sends if that friend still has a board open.
- Duels
- One open duel at a time. Same puzzle both sides, 24 hours to play it.
- Your name
- Up to 14 characters, starting with a letter. You can also nickname a friend privately, and they never see it.
- Streak freezes
- Up to two held at once. One is earned for every seven days in a row, and it covers a missed day automatically.
- Archive boards
- Playable any time and never counted toward a streak, in either direction.
- Your avatar
- A symbol, a board theme and a wallpaper. It saves on your device straight away, and other players see it the next time you are online.
- Symbols
- Shapes, letters, suits, cosmic or botanical: a shape inside every color. Turn them off in settings for color only.
- Reporting
- From the leaderboard you can report a name or a time. The board and rank go with the report; the person is told nothing. From a friend you can block and report, or report the name only and stay friends.
What we left out
Nothing here is watching you.
No advertising and no third-party analytics. Neither is built into the app, so there is nothing to opt out of. You give us no email address and no password: your device gets an anonymous ID and a friend code, and that is the whole account. Crash reports go to our own server in Frankfurt, never to a tracking vendor.
A note from me
There is a theorem that went unproved for 124 years: four colors are enough for any map you can draw on a flat page. However many countries, however many borders, four will always do.
I read about it a few years ago and couldn’t stop turning it over. One rule. No instructions. A board that is never impossible and rarely obvious. It was asking to be a game.
So I made one. Evenings and weekends, by myself. Every board, every color, every line of the server it talks to.
And I kept it small on purpose. No advertising, because I didn’t want to write the part that shows it. No account, because handing over an email address to play a puzzle is an indignity. No analytics, because I’d rather not watch you.
Play it. If something is broken, or missing, or you just think it should work differently, write to me. support@cantle.app for anything about the game, privacy@cantle.app for anything about your data.
Yurii
Today’s board
It’s already waiting.
Coming to the App Store and Google Play
Free to play · No ads · No sign-up