Privacy Policy

What Wordplay keeps about you, why, for how long, and how to take a copy or delete it all yourself.

The Short Version

You never need an account to play, and a guest's games are tied to a random code on the device, not to a person.
We send no marketing email. The only emails are ones you ask for.
There is no advertising or analytics cookie on this site, and we do not sell or share your data.
With an account, you can take a copy of everything we hold or delete it all, yourself, from your account page.

What We Hold, and Why

Your Account, If You Make One

Your email address, the display name you give us, the spelling (US, UK or Australian) and time zone you play in, and when you last signed in or visited. A password only if you choose to set one, stored as a one-way hash that nobody can read back. While you are changing your email address, the new one is held until it confirms. If we ever suspend an account, when and why. Staff accounts also hold an encrypted second-factor secret; player accounts never do.

Why: So your streak and your record follow you from one device to another, so the daily puzzle turns over at midnight where you are, and so we can send the sign-in links you ask for.
On what basis: Necessary to provide the account you asked for.
How long: Until you delete the account. A password-reset link stops working after an hour.

You never need an account to play. An email address given to sign in is not permission to market to you, and we send no marketing email at all: the only emails are the ones you ask for — sign-in links, password resets, changes of address and the copy of your data.

The Games You Play

Each game you finish: the puzzle, your guesses, whether you solved it and how long it took. Your streak for each game, and a history of every change to it. Without an account, a game is recorded against a random code kept in a cookie on your device — not against your name.

Why: To keep your stats and your streak; to judge every guess on our server, so the answer is never sent to your browser; and to count how everybody got on with a puzzle.
On what basis: Necessary to provide the game and the stats you see.
How long: Your streak and its history, until you delete your account. The games themselves are kept as games: when an account is deleted, its games lose everything that points to a person and stay only as part of each puzzle's totals.

A guest's games are tied to the device, not to a person. Clearing your cookies starts a new code, and the old games can no longer be linked to you by anyone — us included.

Challenges You Send

If you challenge a friend: the word, how you did on it, how many people have played it, and — if you were signed in — a link to your account.

Why: So the link you send opens your challenge and shows the other person how you did.
On what basis: Necessary to provide a feature you chose to use.
How long: For as long as the challenge exists. Deleting your account keeps the challenge but removes the link to you, so a friend's link still opens.

The link carries a random code, never the word itself, so the answer cannot be read out of the address.

Asking for Your Data, or for It to Be Deleted

A record of each time you ask for a copy of your data or for your account to be deleted: which you asked for, when, and when it was done.

Why: Because we have to be able to show that we did it. A deletion nobody can prove happened is no better than one that never did.
On what basis: A legal obligation: to honour these requests, and to keep evidence that we did.
How long: Six years after the request is completed. This is the one record that outlives your account — after a deletion it holds your email address and nothing else about you, because otherwise there would be no proof the deletion happened.

A deletion can be stopped for 30 days by signing back in; after that it runs and cannot be undone. A copy of your data is built as a file, kept privately for seven days behind a link that only works for you, and then destroyed.

Technical Records

A session record with your IP address and your browser's description, as with essentially any website.

Why: To keep you signed in, and to stop forged requests being made in your name.
On what basis: Necessary for the site to work securely.
How long: Cleared when the session expires, two hours after you stop using the site.

Your account page lists every device you are signed in on, and lets you sign out of all of them except the one you are using.

Backups

A copy of the whole database is taken every night and the newest 14 are kept, so anything deleted — an account included — can survive in a backup for up to 14 days after it goes. Backups are stored privately on our server and used only to recover the site if something breaks.

Children

The games for children on this site need no account and collect nothing about the child playing them. Nobody under 13 can make an account: sign-up asks for a month and year of birth, and an answer under 13 makes no account and stores no answer. If we learn that an account belongs to a child under 13, we delete it.

Cookies

Name	What it does	How long	Kind
`wordplay-session`	Keeps you signed in, and ties a form you send to the page that showed it.	Two hours, renewed while you use the site.	Essential
`XSRF-TOKEN`	Proves a request came from a page we served, so nobody can act in your name from another site.	Two hours.	Essential
`remember_web_…`	Keeps you signed in on this device between visits. Only set once you sign in.	400 days, or until you sign out.	Essential
`wp_guest`	A random code that keeps a guest's games and streak on this device. Not linked to a name.	One year.	Essential to the game
`wp_spelling`	Whether you play with US, UK or Australian spelling.	One year.	Preference
`wp_zone`	Your time zone, so the daily puzzle turns over at your midnight.	One year.	Preference
`wp_mode`	The mode you chose for unlimited play (normal, hard or extreme).	One year.	Preference
`wp_timer`	Whether timed mode is on.	One year.	Preference
`wp_theme`	The themed word pool you picked.	One year.	Preference
`wp_age`	Set only if the sign-up age question was answered under 13, so the form is not simply tried again. Holds no age and no date.	One day.	Essential

Your Rights

Signed in, your account page lets you download a copy of everything we hold about you and delete your account, without asking anybody. You can change your name and email address there too, and sign out of every other device.

Wordplay is run from the United States. If you live in California or another state with a privacy law, you have the right to know what we hold, to have it deleted and to have it corrected, and we will never treat you differently for using those rights. If you visit from the European Union or the United Kingdom, you have the same rights under the GDPR, and the right to complain to your data protection authority.