Website Privacy Policy

We count visits, but only if you say yes. If you do, each page you open saves the page, where you came from, your IP address, your rough location and your browser and screen. We keep it for 12 months, only we see it, and you can ask us to delete it.

Say no and we save nothing about your visits.

Your game progress doesn’t wait for a yes, because it’s part of the game. After your first finished game against the computer or someone online, or your first daily puzzle or level, we save a made-up name, your level and your results, so you can be on the leaderboards and take your progress to another device. There’s no email, account or real name. You can delete it in Settings.

We also always send a note when the site breaks. It has no IP address, and nothing that knows you again later unless you said yes.

If you’ve said yes, every page you open saves:

• The page, the link you came from, and any campaign tags on that link (utm_source and the like). A link shared from a won game ends in ?ref=share, so we can count the visits shared wins bring.
• Your IP address, and the city, region and country it maps to.
• Your browser, operating system, device type (phone, tablet or computer), screen size, time zone and language.
• How long the page stayed open.
• Whether the page was tapped, clicked, scrolled or typed on, and whether the visit looks automated (worked out from your browser’s own signals).
• A random id kept in your browser, so we can tell a returning visitor from a new one. It has no name on it.

Together these make one record per visitor: when you first and last came, how many visits, and where you first arrived from. We can also type a note on a record by hand.

We use it to see whether anyone is reading, which pages hold attention and whether a link we posted brought anybody. We don’t sell it, we don’t use it for advertising and we don’t use it to decide anything about you. There are no ad or analytics trackers from other companies on the site.

Every player gets a made-up name, a title and a food like Captain Pickle, which we pick at random. Nobody types a name in, so it’s never your real name. You can roll a new one twice a week.

After your first finished game against the computer or someone online, your first daily puzzle or level, or when you first open Save code in Settings, we keep this on our server:

• The made-up name.
• Each game’s result: which game, whether it was against the computer or online, the level, win, loss or draw, how long it took and when. Your last 20 games also keep how many moves were made (for an online game, both players’ moves together). An online game also carries that game’s random number, so it’s only counted once. If you leave an online game before it ends and don’t come back, it’s kept as a loss (one you chose to leave earns no XP).
• Each puzzle’s result: which puzzle (that day’s ClueCraft, Numeridle or Word Search, or a level), whether you solved it, a level’s stars, how long it took and when. A level you missed (or tapped Show me on) is kept too, as a loss with no stars, so that every device you use knows its answer was shown (a level whose answer was shown pays one star at most). Your last 20 also keep how many clues or tries it took (for Word Search, whether you found every word).
• Your coins: how many you have, and what you spent them on and when (which puzzle levels you skipped, and which Word Search puzzle and word you took a hint on). A level’s bought hints are kept with your progress, so you don’t pay for the same hint twice.
• What we work out from those: your XP, level, stars, badges, coins and daily challenge.
• A random player id, and a scrambled (hashed) copy of a secret kept in your browser. The secret is how your browser shows it’s you. The scrambled copy can check it but can’t be turned back into it.

There’s no email, account or real name. Two-player games on one device aren’t recorded, because there’s no telling whose win it was.

Puzzles count towards your XP and level too. So that a result can’t be made up, your browser sends us what you tried (the words you guessed, the sums you made, or for Word Search where on the grid you dragged), and our server checks it against the answer. We keep only the result: whether you solved it and the XP (your last 20 also keep how many clues or tries it took, or for Word Search, whether you found every word). What you tried is never kept on our server. Your browser keeps an unfinished puzzle, and a finished one until it’s sent, so you can carry on. If a Skip gets no answer, it also keeps which level it was for, until our server says whether it went through.

The leaderboards are public. Anyone can see a player’s name and its emoji, their level, their score and how many games they’ve won (and how many of those on Hard). On the puzzle boards (ClueCraft, Numeridle and Word Search) they also see the highest level you’ve solved and your stars in that game, and on the weekly ones your puzzle XP and how many you’ve solved.

When you play someone online, they can tap your name to see your level, your XP, how many games you’ve won, lost and drawn against people in each game, and how your games against them went. You see the same about them. If you’re off the leaderboards, they see only your name. Your device gets a ticket from us that says who you are without showing your player id, and the game passes it to the other player’s screen; it stops working after a day.

A save code, like PICKLE-TACO-WAFFLE-482193, moves your progress to another device. We keep only a scrambled copy of it, so we can’t show it to you again; your browser keeps the last one it made. Making a new code stops the old one working.

To slow down anyone guessing save codes or making players in bulk, one internet address gets 10 save-code tries and 30 new players an hour, and the whole site takes 500 save-code tries an hour. To count them we keep a scrambled copy of the address, made fresh each day with a secret key, and delete it after a day. (A newer IPv6 address counts with the rest of its block, as one home or phone has the whole block.) Our server also counts requests from each address for a minute, in memory only, and never writes that down.

Playing the computer sends nothing to our game server. Playing someone online does, and it happens whether or not you accepted the prompt, because a game against another person can’t work without it.

• A random guest id, kept in your browser. There’s no email or account behind it.
• Your made-up name, so the other player can see it. The server doesn’t write it down.
• Your seat in the game, so you can get back in if the page closes. It’s forgotten after 60 seconds away, or when the game ends.
• Your IP address, held in memory to limit how many games one network can start. It isn’t written down.
• When nobody’s free, one of our robot players may step in. A game against one counts like any online game, and a robot’s record keeps only its own games, never anything about the person it played.

The server also keeps a log of game events: a room opened, someone joined or left, whose turn it was and when, a game ended. Each line carries a short code made from your IP address that changes every day and can’t be turned back into it. There are no moves in the log and no chat in the game. Lines are deleted after 30 days.

Page views wait for you to press Accept. Ignoring the prompt counts as no, and your answer is remembered. You can change it here at any time.

If your browser sends Do Not Track, we record nothing and you never see the prompt. The exceptions are a problem you report yourself (Report a problem, or Tell us when a game gets stuck) and a 👍 or 👎 you tap under a guide: you pressed it, so it goes, with no id. Under Do Not Track your progress stays on this device only. Nothing about it is saved on our server, so there’s no saved copy, no leaderboards and no save code. Online games still show your made-up name to the other player.

Settings (the cog in the top bar, or the Settings tab at the bottom of a phone) has two choices for your progress. “Delete my saved progress” deletes everything we hold for you on our server, takes you off the leaderboards, and your save code stops working. It doesn’t touch the progress on this device. After a delete, “Save my progress again” starts your progress again from Level 1, on our server and on this device. Your name stays, unless someone else has it by then.

When something breaks (an error, a board that won’t appear or goes blank, a page that freezes, a screen that had to be redrawn, an online game that gets stuck, progress that won’t save, a puzzle that’s slow to come up after you tap Play), the site sends a short note whether or not you accepted. It holds technical details only: what went wrong, the page and game, your browser, operating system and device type, the site version, the page’s state and connection, whether your browser can draw game graphics, whether the site is in light mode and why, whether the visit looks automated (worked out from your browser’s own signals) and whether the page had been tapped, which of our files was running when a page froze (Chrome only), and the last few things the page did. A note that a page froze also says how long the game board took to start, and your device’s graphics chip (its make and model only, like “Adreno 630”) and how much memory and how many processor cores your browser reports. It has no IP address. Notes from one open tab share a random number that’s gone when you close it, and an online game’s notes carry a random number for that game and how many moves had been played, so we can find it in our server’s log. A note that your progress didn’t save adds only which request it was and the number our server answered with (0 if it couldn’t be reached). If we tried again, it says so, and with no answer at all, one word for why: offline, cut short or network. A note that a puzzle was slow to come up says only how many seconds it took, whether the next page or its puzzle was the wait, and whether you’d switched away meanwhile.

If you accepted, notes also carry your visitor id and the id of that visit, and name the pages and games in those last steps, and we note how online games go for you (you got in, were turned away, lost the connection). Moves are never sent.

If you accepted, we also note your puzzles: which daily puzzle you opened and finished (solved or not, and in how many clues or tries, or for Word Search, whether you found every word), which level you solved and its stars, whether you shared a result (by the share sheet, a copy or by hand), and which of our links to today’s challenge you tapped. Never what you typed.

Report a problem sends the choice you tapped with the same note. There’s no box to type in.

Under each guide you can tap 👍 or 👎. We store which guide and which button, with the time, and nothing else: no id, no address, not even your browser. Your browser remembers what you tapped so the guide shows it next time, and tapping it again takes it back. We only look at the totals, to see which guides need work, and we never show them.

Page views and game notes are kept for 12 months. A visitor record goes once it has no page views left in that time, along with its device details, location and notes. Error notes are kept for 90 days.

Your saved progress is kept for 12 months after the last time we saved anything for you, then deleted along with its name, results and save code. “Delete my saved progress” in Settings does the same straight away. The scrambled internet addresses used to count save-code tries and new players go after a day.

Clearing this site’s data in your browser doesn’t delete your saved progress, and after that Settings can’t reach it. It still goes by itself 12 months after we last saved anything for you. To delete it sooner, email hello@scamplabs.com your save code (or your made-up name and roughly when you last played).

The data sits with a database provider that stores it for us and doesn’t use it. Our host sees your IP address when it serves you a page, as any host does. Apart from the public leaderboards, nobody else reads it.

To have it deleted, email hello@scamplabs.com. You don’t need a reason or an account. If this browser has a visitor id it’s shown under Your choices, and quoting it lets us find the exact rows. Without it we match on IP address and time, which is fuzzier. Clearing this site’s data in your browser removes the id but not the rows already saved, so the email is what actually deletes.

If what we record changes, this page and its date change too. If we add a new kind of data to what we record about your visits, or a new company receives it, the prompt comes back, so your answer never covers something you haven’t seen.

Questions, corrections or a deletion request: hello@scamplabs.com. A person reads it.

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