Every Kludoku case is generated, then machine-verified to admit exactly one solution before it reaches you. That guarantee shapes all the tools: everything in the game exists to help you find the forced logic, never to replace it.
Stuck genuinely — not "impatient" stuck, but stared-at-it-for-five-minutes stuck? The hint button nudges you toward the next provable step instead of solving the board for you: the point is to reopen your reasoning, not to close the case. Free players get a limited number of hints; premium removes the limit. The first time you use one, the game shows you how it works on your live board.
The most powerful tool in the box. Right-click any suspect's portrait (hold, on touch) to open a hypothesis branch: place your guess and everything that follows from it renders dashed on top of the real board. Open a second branch and it waits as a mini portrait in the corner of its square. When a branch contradicts a testimony, drop it — the game strikes the disproven pencil mark on the real board, converting your failed experiment into a solid deduction. When a branch survives to the end, keep it and it becomes the solution.
Branches are how careful solvers do bifurcation without wrecking their board, and how accomplice-hunters test "what if the Curator is the liar?" against "what if it's the Butler?" side by side — each branch can carry its own accomplice assumption.
While you're learning, assist modes can gray out squares that are illegal for the selected suspect and spotlight the squares a testimony talks about when you tap it. Purists can switch all of it off; the case is the same either way.
Nothing in a Kludoku case is hidden information — every deduction is available from the testimonies on screen, and the single-solution guarantee means "I had to guess" is never true. If a board feels like it needs a leap, the ladder in the techniques guide almost certainly names the step you're missing — and the ⚑ report button is there if you believe a case is genuinely wrong; a human reads those.