Mystery solved. I knew there was no way I could update the game by mistake.
So, today SP mysteriously updated itself. Like before, I made sure I had auto updates turned off, and yes they are. After giving my Googe-Fu quite the workout, I found that while there are several people complaining that they have auto updates turned ON--clearly these people don't play PG games!--and it's not working, I also found some that are complaining about apps suddenly updating when they have the auto feature turned OFF. It seems I have to reset my device to fix it!! I'll either lose my game entirely or reinstalling it will fix it.
So in case anyone has updates start happening, it's a little known iOS 9 bug. It didn't happen to me until iOS 9.1.