Support

Help with Stelline

Everything the game does, in one page. If your question is not here, write to us.

The rules

Stelline plays Star Battle-style logic puzzles. The board is a square grid divided into colour regions (or bordered regions in the Classic theme). There are as many regions as rows.

1 queen mode

• Every row holds exactly one queen.
• Every column holds exactly one queen.
• Every region holds exactly one queen.
• Two queens never touch — not side by side, not diagonally.

2 stars mode

• Every row, every column and every region holds exactly two stars.
• Two stars never touch, not even diagonally.

Every board has exactly one solution, and the game checks that before it shows you the board. On every tier except Expert in 2 stars mode there is always a next step the hint ladder can name; Expert 2 stars boards are verified unique but may need what-if reasoning the ladder cannot explain (see Hints).

The in-app tutorial (How to play on the Home screen) walks through the rules on real boards.

Modes and board sizes

Pick the mode and the size on the Home screen; the choice applies to the next New puzzle.

• 1 queen: sizes 6×6 to 11×11. Difficulty Easy, Medium, Hard or Expert.
• 2 stars: sizes 9×9 to 11×11. Difficulty Medium, Hard, and Expert from 10×10 up.

The game remembers the size and difficulty you last used in each mode. A handful of built-in sample boards is also available from the Home screen.

Controls

Tap a cell

Cycles it: empty → dot → queen (or star) → empty.

Drag across cells

Dots every cell you cross. Start the drag on a dot you placed yourself to erase dots instead. Starting on a queen or star does nothing, so you cannot drag a piece away by accident. One drag is one undo step.

Undo, Redo, Clear

Under the board. Clear empties the whole board and can itself be undone. Undo history is saved with the game.

Hint

In the toolbar. See Hints.

New puzzle / Next puzzle

Generates a fresh board of the selected mode, size and difficulty. The board you leave is not kept; only the game you are currently playing is saved.

Dots, X marks, queens and stars

A dot means “no queen or star can go here”. It is a note to yourself; the game ignores dots when deciding whether the puzzle is solved, so a stray dot never blocks a win. If you prefer the traditional look, Settings → Mark switches the dot to an X. The meaning is the same.

The piece you place is drawn as a crown on 1 queen boards and a star on 2 stars boards. Settings → Piece can force a queen or a star on every board. Again, only the drawing changes.

Auto-dots and Auto-check

• Auto-dots around a queen or star (on by default): placing a piece dots its eight neighbours, because nothing can touch it. Removing the piece removes the dots it caused — and only those; dots you placed yourself stay.
• Auto-dots for completed lines and regions (off by default): once a row, column or region has all its queens or stars, its remaining cells are dotted.
• Auto-check (on by default): pieces that touch, or that exceed what a row, column or region may hold, are striped in red. Turn it off in Settings if you prefer to find conflicts yourself.

To remove an automatic dot, tap the cell twice (the first tap turns it into a queen or star, the second empties it), or use the Clear cell VoiceOver action. Drag-erase only removes dots you placed yourself.

Hints and “Show me where”

The Hint button works in stages, so you only get as much help as you ask for. Every stage counts as a hint.

1. Counters. The first tap shows two numbers: misplaced queens (pieces that are not on a solution cell) and misplaced dots (dots sitting where a queen or star belongs). It never says where. Zero and zero means everything on the board is right so far; anything else means it is time to undo.
2. Show me where. If something is misplaced, the game highlights the region (or regions) that holds the mistake, then, on the next tap, the exact cells, and finally offers to Clear them. If the board is all correct, it instead highlights the row, column or region behind the next logical step — or the cells themselves when the step spans several units — then shows the cells with a preview of the dots and pieces the step settles, names the technique, and can Do it for you.
3. Reveal. Only when no logical step is available (which is rare, and only on Expert 2 stars boards) the game offers to place one solution queen or star.

Using a hint means the board will not earn the Flawless badge, which is reserved for solves with no hints and no conflicts.

What the difficulty means

Before a board is offered, a deduction engine solves it with the techniques a person would use, from “dot the neighbours of a piece” to counting arguments across several regions, and grades it from the reasoning it needed. The grade does not depend on the board size.

Easy

Simple steps all the way: forced cells, neighbours, lines locked in a region.

Medium

A few moments where you must weigh two or three cells against each other, or count queens across regions.

Hard

Several counting steps, or, in 2 stars mode, one-level what-if reasoning (“what if a star went here?”, never nested), possibly at more than one point.

Expert

In 1 queen mode, the board needs one-level what-if reasoning (“what if a queen went here?”, never nested), possibly at more than one point. In 2 stars mode, the board is verified unique but may need what-if reasoning that goes beyond the engine’s named techniques; it is offered from 10×10 up and marked as such.

Colour-blind mode, Classic theme, appearance

• Colour-blind mode (Settings) swaps the pastel palette for high-contrast colours chosen so that every pair of neighbouring regions stays distinct under the common forms of colour vision deficiency, and thickens the region borders.
• Classic theme draws the traditional black-and-white Star Battle look: white cells (near-black in dark appearance), a light grid and heavy region borders, with no colours at all.
• Appearance follows your iPhone’s light or dark setting, or you can pin one. Dark appearance uses softer region colours.
• Region borders are always drawn, in every theme, so colour is never the only cue.

Timer, autosave and Continue

• The timer starts when a board appears and pauses whenever the app is not in front. Hide it with Settings → Show timer; it keeps counting quietly.
• Your game is saved after every move, including the undo and redo history. Quit, switch apps or restart the phone: the Home screen shows Continue with the board size and time so far.
• Only one game is kept: the one in progress. Starting a new puzzle replaces it.
• Everything is stored on your iPhone only. See Privacy.

Accessibility

• VoiceOver: every cell is announced with its state, region colour name, row and column, and offers the actions Mark dot (or Mark X), Place queen (or Place star) and Clear cell. Hints, banners and the difficulty badge are labelled.
• Dynamic Type: all controls scale with your text size; the board never gets clipped, even at the largest accessibility sizes.
• Reduce Motion: the generating shimmer, the banner and Solved transitions, the hint-highlight animation and the completion badge bounce are disabled when it is on.
• Haptics can be turned off in Settings.

Requirements

• iPhone running iOS 26 or later. Earlier versions of iOS cannot install the app.
• iPhone only, portrait orientation. It is not available for iPad, Mac or Apple Watch.
• No internet connection is needed, ever. Nothing is downloaded after installation.
• English only for now.

Privacy

Stelline collects no data at all. It has no network access, no account, no analytics, no ads and no third-party code. Your settings and your saved game stay on your iPhone and are deleted with the app. Full details are in the privacy policy.

Report a problem

Found a bug, a board that looks wrong, or something the hints explain badly? Use the contact form below, email support@stelline.page, or, if you have a GitHub account, the forms on GitHub: report a problem, send feedback or suggest a feature. Posting needs a free GitHub account; every note is read. Please do not include personal information in a report.

Because the app sends nothing to us, we cannot see your game. The following helps us reproduce a problem:

• iPhone model and iOS version (Settings → General → About).
• Stelline version, shown in the app under Settings → About.
• The mode, board size and difficulty, and what you did just before the problem.
• A screenshot of the board if you can. If you think a board has more than one solution, a screenshot of the empty board is all we need.

Contact form

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