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About MenteBrillante

MenteBrillante is an independent project. I build it and maintain it on my own, under the name farrudeveloper, from Spain.

Why this app exists

I wanted to build a puzzle app for everyone, without aggressive advertising, that genuinely exercised your head instead of being one more game to kill time with.

Before starting I looked at the people around me — family and friends — and saw that this was exactly what they were asking for and what suited them best. Everything else was built on top of that idea.

Who makes it

I have around six years of self-taught programming behind me and I am still learning everything I can, both to get my own ideas built and to give something back to the wider community. 2026 is the year I went all in on trying to make room for myself in the app market.

MenteBrillante is the first app I have published. I have several other projects in development that will come out as they are ready. There is no team behind this, no newsroom and no agency: if something on this site or in the app is well made, that is on me — and if something is wrong, that is on me too.

How the puzzles are generated and validated

This is the part that takes the most work and the part nobody sees. The puzzles are not copied from anywhere and they are not written by hand: they are produced by my own code, and before anything ships it goes through validators that reject whatever is broken. Two concrete examples:

• Sudoku. The generator counts the solutions of every grid and throws it away if it finds more than one. A sudoku with two solutions is not a sudoku: it can be filled in "correctly" two different ways and the player has no way of knowing which one counts. If a single grid in a batch fails the check, the script aborts and nothing is published.
• Crosswords. The coordinates are not stored in the file: they are worked out when the puzzle is served, by crossing the words against each other. That is why the whole bank goes through the real layout generator first, which checks that the words really do intersect, that the resulting grid fits, and that no word is left stranded away from the rest. You cannot see that by reading the file — you have to run it.
• Everything else. Word searches, anagrams, number series, riddles and the rest each have their own generator and their own verification. The rule is the same for all of them: if a puzzle does not pass the check, it does not ship.

The app has fourteen daily puzzle types, plus arrow words, with five new challenges every day and free practice. Difficulty adapts to each player's level.

About what gets published on the blog

The blog articles explain how to solve the puzzles that are in the app: sudoku techniques, crossword tactics, how to attack an anagram or a number series. They come out of having programmed those puzzles and having had to understand their rules properly in order to generate and validate them.

I am responsible for everything published here. If you find a mistake, a wrong fact or an explanation that does not make sense, write to me and I will fix it.

How it is funded

The app and this site are free. They are supported by advertising and by optional in-app purchases. No purchase is needed to play: the fourteen puzzle types, the daily challenges and practice are all available without paying anything. What is sold is removing the ads and optional extras, such as opening all the extra practice puzzles at once, which also open for free by watching an ad.

The conditions are in the Terms of use, and data handling is covered in the Privacy policy.

Getting in touch

The general address is contacto@mentebrillanteapp.com. The contact page lists every address and what each one is for.

Play MenteBrillante today

Fourteen puzzles, five new challenges every day and free practice. Free on your phone and in your browser: create your account in 10 seconds.

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