Play the classics, properly.

Rivals, not sliders.

Most games give you a difficulty menu. Boardalo gives you somebody to beat. Every level of challenge is a hand-illustrated character with their own voice, their own manner at the board, and their own opinion of your last move.

You start against Digby, a cosy half-blind mole who apologises when he wins. Get past him and Bodge is waiting, a scrappy gremlin who plays fast and is confidently wrong. Then Lord Grimalkin, all velvet menace, and Master Yuzu, a capybara sage who has never once hurried. Beat the ladder and something is waiting at the top. We won't say what. It sings.

They remember your head-to-head record, react to every win, loss and comeback, and twice a year the cast grows, when ten seasonal characters arrive around Halloween and Christmas. One of them is a Victorian ghost who apologises for winning.

Ten games free, forever.

Ten games are free forever, including the museum set: Senet, the Royal Game of Ur and Viking Hnefatafl among them. And the free tier isn't a demo. The computer opponent runs a real search: it reads several moves ahead, remembers positions it has worked out, and knows its openings. Its full Standard strength is free on every free game.

Prefer to own the lot? One purchase of £4.99 unlocks all 37, forever, and it works with Family Sharing, so one unlock covers the whole family. No subscription, no in-app currency. And when you fancy company, pass-and-play lets two people share one device across the kitchen table.

Exactly one answer. Proved.

This is the part most puzzle apps get wrong, and it's the reason Numalo exists. Every puzzle is generated on your device, then solved and proved to have exactly one solution before it's allowed anywhere near you.

What that means in practice: you will never reach the last three squares and discover the grid has two endings. You will never be told a correct answer is wrong. When you're stuck, it's a real "stuck", the kind worth thinking through, because the logic is guaranteed to be there.

Two free a day. One payment, ever.

Every day, two puzzles are free (three at weekends), plus the daily challenge, two hints per puzzle type, and Easy and Medium difficulty. One purchase, Numalo Unlimited, unlocks the whole paper forever: every puzzle, Hard difficulty for the brave, unlimited hints, and Family Sharing so it covers your household. No subscription, no adverts, no nagging.

And like its wordy sibling, Numalo prints: export any puzzle as a clean four-page PDF, send it to the printer, and solve it at the kitchen table with a pencil like a civilised person.