Since 13 October, Ponder makes sounds. Each one answers a single question: did that just happen? Here’s how we chose them, and the rules they all follow.
A sound says what you did, not whether it was right
This was the first rule, and the most important. Placing a circle in Binary sounds the same whether the circle is right or wrong. If correct moves sounded different, you could solve a board by ear, and the sound would be doing your thinking for you.
The same goes for anything the board doesn’t already show. A sound never hints at a move, and every action still makes sense with sound off. There’s one sound for a broken rule. It plays once, only when the board is already showing that conflict, after the same one-second pause the board uses. Fixing a mistake is silent; you don’t need a fanfare for putting something right.
Wood and felt
None of Ponder’s sounds are recordings. Each one is built from scratch by a small program, which meant we could try the whole set in more than one character before choosing. We made two: Wood, crisp and tactile, and Felt, softer and rounder. Then we played through solves in every family with each, side by side.
The moves went to Wood. Placing a light or a flower should feel like setting a tile down on a table: short, definite, a little bit physical. Everything shared between families went to Felt: undo, redo, a hint, a conflict, and the sounds for finishing a puzzle or a whole set. Felt sits slightly behind the moves, which is where those sounds belong.
Everything in one key
All the sounds are tuned to the same five-note scale, F major pentatonic. That scale has no notes that clash, so sounds that overlap still fit together. It also lets each family have a little tune of its own. In Binary, the circle sits a fourth below the diamond. In Mini Sudoku, the numbers 1 to 6 climb the scale, so a 6 sounds higher than a 1.
Drags climb too. Each step of a Paths route, a Ribbons route or a stretching rectangle goes one note higher, up to an octave, and then starts again from the bottom, so a long drag keeps moving. Pause, and the next step starts from the bottom again. In Paths, each checkpoint you reach sounds a step higher than the one before.
Small things that make a difference
Hearing the exact same sound fifty times in a row gets mechanical fast. So each move varies very slightly in pitch and loudness every time it plays, by less than you’d consciously notice. Chimes and finishing sounds don’t vary; they should sound the same every time.
Loudness is matched by role. A step is the quietest sound, a placed piece is a little louder, and finishing a whole Daily set is the loudest. Endings are kept short, so a hint or a solved board never rings over your next moves. And a sound never makes you wait. If one hasn’t loaded yet, it’s simply skipped.
Where the browser allows, Ponder plays alongside your own music rather than stopping it, and an iPhone’s silent switch silences it.
What we left out
There are no sounds for menus, page changes, timers or saving. The Race clock doesn’t tick. We tried to give each sound a reason to exist, and “something happened in the app” wasn’t a good enough reason.
Turning it off
Sound is on by default. You can turn it off in Settings, under Appearance, or with the speaker switch beside the account button on any puzzle screen. The switch is there mid-puzzle because the right moment to turn sound off is usually the moment someone nearby looks up. Nothing about the game changes with sound off. It was designed that way from the first rule.