How Meowdoku: Sunny Spots works
Meowdoku: Sunny Spots is a logic puzzle game for Android phones by Sonicon Software. Place one cat in every row, column and coloured region of a 5×5 to 10×10 grid, with no two cats touching. Some puzzles add sunny sills or cuddle pairs. Every puzzle has one solution you can reach by logic. No ads, no purchases, no internet.
The rules
Place one cat in every row, every column and every coloured region of the grid. No two cats may touch, not even diagonally, unless a heart pairs their regions. Each puzzle has exactly one solution. Tap a spot once for an X, tap twice or touch and hold for a cat, and undo or redo as often as you like.
Marks are notes only: they never cause a conflict and never decide whether the board is solved.
Window rules: sunbeams, cuddle pairs and sleeping cats
Some puzzles add a window rule. A sunny sill shows how many cats sit in the eight cells around it, from 0 to 8, and never holds a cat itself. A heart joins two neighbouring regions, and their two cats must touch corner to corner, the one time cats may touch. Sleeping cats start in place and never move.
Sunbeams join the Journey at level 21 and cuddle pairs at level 41; from level 61, classic, sunbeam, cuddle and mixed levels take turns. Levels 21–23 and 41–43 are gentle: at most 7×7 Medium, opening with two, one and one sleeping cats, and they leave your Journey difficulty alone. A board has one heart up to 7×7 and one or two from 8×8. The first time you meet a rule, a short card explains it and the timer waits; tapping a sill or a sleeping cat only shows a note.
How a puzzle is made
Every puzzle is made on your phone. A seeded generator plants a solution and grows the coloured regions around it. Classic and cuddle puzzles are repaired until a solver finds exactly one solution; sunbeam and mixed puzzles get numbered sills instead. The deduction engine then solves it, and the puzzle is kept only if it finishes at the requested difficulty.
If your phone takes more than 3 seconds to make a Journey or free-play puzzle, the app uses one of the puzzles it ships with for that size, difficulty and rules. The Daily waits for its own puzzle.
The twelve techniques
The engine knows twelve techniques and uses the simplest one that works. Seven solve classic puzzles; five read sills and hearts. Easy steps start from a placed cat, a last spot, a full or empty sill, or a heart's cat. Medium adds confinement and two sill and heart steps, Hard adds shared neighbours and pairs, Expert larger sets and what-ifs.
| Order | Technique | Tier | What it concludes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Placed cat | Easy | A placed cat rules out the rest of its row, column and region and its eight neighbours, except the corner cells its heart partner may use. |
| 2 | Last spot | Easy | A row, column or region has one spot left, so its cat goes there. |
| 3 | Clear sill | Easy | A sill showing 0, or one that already has its number of cats around it, rules out its other open neighbours. |
| 4 | Full sill | Easy | A sill with exactly as many open neighbours as cats it still needs gets a cat in each. |
| 5 | Last cuddle | Easy | Once one cat of a heart is placed, its partner sits in a corner cell of the other region. If one such cell is left, the cat goes there; otherwise the rest of that region is out. |
| 6 | Confinement | Medium | A region's open spots all lie in one row or column, so the other cells of that line are out. Or a line's open spots all lie in one region, so the rest of that region is out. |
| 7 | Lonely cuddler | Medium | Before either heart cat is placed, a spot in one heart region with no open corner partner in the other region is out. |
| 8 | Sill squeeze | Medium | A sill that needs one more cat, with all its open neighbours in one row, column or region, holds that unit's cat, so the unit's other cells are out. It also works the other way round. |
| 9 | Shared neighbours | Hard | A cat in this cell would rule out every open spot of some row, column or region, so the cell is out. |
| 10 | Pairs | Hard | Two regions whose open spots lie in two lines own those lines: other regions' cells in them are out. Or two lines whose open spots lie in two regions own those regions. |
| 11 | Larger sets | Expert | The same with three or more regions and lines. |
| 12 | One-step what-if | Expert | Suppose a cat in this cell and apply only the Easy techniques. If a row, column or region ends with no room, a sill can no longer match its number, or a heart's cats end up apart, the cell is out. One supposition, never nested. |
Hints
A hint points at the next step and says why it works, for example that a row has one spot left. Showing a hint changes nothing; tap Show me to apply that one step. If a cat you placed is wrong, the hint points at it first. Hints lower that puzzle's stars but never take XP away.
Hint text never covers the cells it talks about. Sill and heart steps get their own plain explanations, such as a sill showing 0 ruling out the spots around it.
Difficulty and the Journey
The first eight Journey levels are fixed warm-ups: three 5×5 Easy, three 6×6 Easy and two 6×6 Medium. After that, a skill score picks each new level from a nine-step ladder that ends at 10×10 Expert, using your time against par, mistakes and hints, and moving one step at most.
Easier and Harder on the home screen move it yourself. The ladder: 5×5 Easy → 6×6 Easy → 6×6 Medium → 7×7 Medium → 7×7 Hard → 8×8 Hard → 8×8 Expert → 9×9 Expert → 10×10 Expert. Sunbeam levels start at 21 and cuddle levels at 41, and from 61 classic, sunbeam, cuddle and mixed levels take turns. The gentle levels 21–23 and 41–43 are capped at 7×7 Medium; after them the levels climb back one step at a time.
The Daily
The Daily is built on your phone from the date. Its size and difficulty follow the weekday, easiest on Monday and hardest on Sunday, and from November 16, 2026 the weekday also picks its rules. Solve it on its day to extend your streak. Any of the previous 30 days can be played late, but late solves do not count.
| Day | Grid | Difficulty | Rules |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 6×6 | Easy | Classic |
| Tuesday | 7×7 | Medium | Sunbeams |
| Wednesday | 7×7 | Hard | Cuddles |
| Thursday | 8×8 | Medium | Classic |
| Friday | 8×8 | Hard | Sunbeams |
| Saturday | 9×9 | Hard | Cuddles |
| Sunday | 10×10 | Expert | Mix |
The calendar shows which days you solved on time and which you caught up later.
Stars, XP, ranks and badges
Stars count only hints and mistakes: three stars for a solve with neither, two for one or two in total, one otherwise. Time never affects stars. Every solve earns XP, itemised by reason, toward cat-titled ranks, and 21 badges track milestones, four for sunbeams and cuddle pairs. Hints and mistakes never take XP away.
A sunbeam or cuddle solve earns the same XP as a classic one of the same size and difficulty. Fastest and average times are kept for each grid size and set of rules.
Inputs and limits
- Grids run from 5×5 to 10×10, with one cat per row, column and region. There are no two-cat variants and no larger grids. The window rules are sunbeams and cuddle pairs, alone or together; a board has one heart up to 7×7 and one or two from 8×8.
- The hardest step, which only Expert puzzles need, is a one-step “what if”: suppose a cat in a cell and see whether a row, column or region runs out of room, a sill misses its number, or a heart's cats end up apart.
- A puzzle's difficulty names the hardest technique the app's engine needed. Your own route may feel easier or harder.
- If your phone takes more than 3 seconds to make a Journey or free-play puzzle, the app uses one of the puzzles it ships with for that size, difficulty and rules.
- The Daily is built from your phone's date. Dailies dated November 16, 2026 or later follow the weekday's rules; an older version of the app builds a classic puzzle for the same date. An app update that changes the puzzle generator also changes future Daily puzzles.
- Only a Daily solved on its own day extends the streak. The calendar reaches back 30 days; late solves there do not count toward the streak.
- The timer starts when the board appears, pauses when you pause, leave the app, open a menu or read a rule card, and keeps running while a hint is open. Hiding it hides the display; your times still count toward your fastest times and the Journey's difficulty. Stars never use time. Gentle levels with sleeping cats set no time.
- Journey levels you opened before the window rules arrived stay classic; levels opened later follow the chapter schedule.
- Gentle levels (21–23 and 41–43) are capped at 7×7 Medium and do not change the Journey's difficulty.
- Progress lives on one phone. Nothing goes to cloud backup; on Android 12 and later it can move only by a direct phone-to-phone transfer when you set up a new phone. Uninstalling the app or clearing its data erases it.
- English only, for Android phones.
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