Privacy policy

What we collect

You can play every daily puzzle without an account. What we hold depends on whether you sign up.

• If you create an account: your name, email address, and a password (which we store only as a secure hash — we never see or keep the plain text). We also record the puzzles you solve, your solve times, and your timezone, so we can show your streaks, best times, and progress calendar.
• If you play as a guest: your progress lives in your own browser's local storage on your device — keys named puzzleSolves, queensSolves, slidesmithSolves, queensGuestStreak, and a few settings like autoColorRegions and hasSeenTutorial. Your saved progress stays on your device.
• Anonymous play records: when anyone starts or solves a puzzle, we record which puzzle, how long it took, and whether it was played on a phone, tablet, or computer — never your name, email, or IP address. If you've allowed analytics, we tie those records to a random ID kept in a cookie, so we can see how people come back to the site. If you then create an account, we link that ID to it, along with the page that brought you to the site and the page you signed up from, so your guest history carries over.

When you register, we offer to move your guest solves from that local storage into your new account so your streak survives the sign-up. That transfer only happens because you registered.

Cookies and local storage

We keep cookies to a minimum:

• Session and security cookies. Laravel sets a session cookie and a CSRF-protection cookie so you can stay logged in and submit forms safely. These are essential to the site working.
• Anonymous ID cookie. A random ID that ties your anonymous play records together. It says nothing about who you are, and we only set it if you've allowed analytics.
• Local storage. As above, we use your browser's local storage to remember your settings and guest progress. You can clear it any time from your browser.
• Analytics cookies. Google Analytics sets cookies holding a randomly generated visitor ID, so we can count returning visitors rather than raw page views. See Analytics below.
• Advertising cookies. Our advertising partner, Raptive, and the ad networks it works with may set cookies to serve and measure the ads on this site. See Advertising below for what that means and how to opt out.

Analytics

We use two analytics tools to understand roughly how many people visit and which puzzles are popular:

• Cloudflare Web Analytics. Counts page views without using cookies and without building a profile of you or following you across other websites.
• Google Analytics. Unlike Cloudflare's, this one does set cookies. It gives us a randomly generated visitor ID so we can tell a returning visitor from a new one and see which pages lead where. We don't upload your email address or any other identifying detail to it, and we don't use it to build advertising profiles — but it is a Google product, and your usage data is processed on Google's servers under Google's privacy policy.

You can opt out of Google Analytics on every site you visit with Google's opt-out browser add-on, or by turning off analytics cookies in the cookie preferences linked in our footer.

Advertising

This site is affiliated with Raptive for the purposes of placing advertising on the site, and Raptive will collect and use certain data for advertising purposes. To learn more about Raptive's data usage, read the Raptive Advertising Privacy Statement.

In plain terms: Raptive and the ad networks it works with use cookies and similar identifiers to serve and measure ads, and some of those ads may be based on your visits to this site and to other sites. Unlike the rest of what we do, advertising does involve tracking that reaches beyond TryHard Puzzles.

You have a few ways out of that:

• Use the cookie preferences link in our footer to turn advertising cookies off.
• Turn on Global Privacy Control in your browser. We and Raptive treat that signal as a request to opt out of the sale or sharing of your data.
• Opt out of personalised advertising across the industry at optout.aboutads.info.

If you're in the European Economic Area, the UK, or Switzerland, we'll ask for your consent before any advertising cookies are set, and you can change or withdraw that choice at any time.

What we don't do

• We don't run any email marketing — we have no mailing list and send no promotional email. The only email we'd send is a transactional one, like a password reset if you ask for it.
• We don't hand your account details — your name, email, or password — to anyone.
• We don't track you across other sites ourselves. The one exception is the advertising described above, which is our ad partner's tracking, not ours, and which you can opt out of.

Your choices and rights

You're in control of your data:

• See or correct it. Your name, email, and stats are visible in your profile.
• Delete it. Email us and we'll close your account and remove your data. There's no premium tier or subscription to cancel — the whole site is free.
• Play without an account. Play as a guest and we never hold your name or email — only the anonymous play records described above, and your progress stays on your device.
• Opt out of advertising tracking. Use the cookie preferences link in our footer, or turn on Global Privacy Control in your browser.

Depending on where you live, you may have legal rights to know what personal information we hold about you, to have it deleted, to correct it, and to opt out of the sale or sharing of it for targeted advertising. California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, and several other US states grant these rights, as do the GDPR and the UK GDPR. To exercise any of them, email us at the address below and we'll respond within the time the law allows. We won't treat you differently for doing so. If you'd rather opt out of sale or sharing without emailing, the cookie preferences link and Global Privacy Control both do that automatically.

Children

TryHard Puzzles is for a general audience and isn't directed at children under 13. We don't knowingly collect data from them. If you believe a child has given us personal information, email us and we'll delete it.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle data, we'll update this page and change the date at the top. For anything significant — like a new advertising or analytics partner — we'll make the change here before it takes effect.