Privacy

Last updated 10 September 2026

Wordspool is made by Coubrough Games. This policy covers the game at wordspool.app and the Wordspool Android app, which is the same website in an app shell rather than a separate program.

The short version

We never ask who you are. There is no account, no sign up, no email address and no password. Nothing you do inside a puzzle is sent to us while you are playing it.

There is one exception, and it is the leaderboard. When you win a puzzle, the route you walked is sent to us so that the score can be worked out and added to the week's board. It is attached to a random number this site gives your browser, not to you. You can put a first name and an initial beside that number if you want to, and if you do not you appear as a Wordspooler. The section below says exactly what is kept.

What the game keeps on your device

Six things, all of them stored by your own browser:

• wordspool-theme: whether you chose the light or the dark ground.
• wordspool-sound: whether sound is on.
• wordspool-streak: which daily puzzles you have finished, so the streak can be drawn. It holds a list of dates, about a year of them, and nothing else.
• wordspool-visit: one mark saying the menu has already been shown in this tab. It is gone when the tab closes.
• wordspool-me: your leaderboard number and the secret that goes with it. The number is public and appears beside your score. The secret is what proves a score is yours, it is never shown to anybody, and we hold only a one way hash of it rather than the thing itself.
• wordspool-week: the points and position you were last told you had, so the corner of the screen can be filled in before the page has asked us anything.

The first four never leave your device. The last two are how your browser identifies itself to the leaderboard.

Clearing site data for wordspool.app erases all six, and in the Android app so does clearing the app's storage. Doing that detaches you from your leaderboard number for good: we have no way to tell that a new browser is the same person, which is the same fact that makes the whole thing anonymous.

What the server sees

The site is hosted on Cloudflare. Like any web host it handles the request itself: the address asked for, the time, the browser's user agent and the IP address the request arrived from. That is ordinary server operation, and it is what lets the page reach you at all.

When you share a result the score travels in the link, so that the picture on it can be drawn. A shared link carries the puzzle code, the moves, the par and the two end words. It carries nothing about you, and anyone you send it to can read it, which is the whole point of sharing it.

The leaderboard

Winning a puzzle sends us the board it was on, the two end words, and the route you walked between them. We re walk that route ourselves to work out what it was worth, because the alternative is believing whatever a browser tells us it scored. Nothing about a puzzle you did not finish is ever sent.

Against your number we keep: the points you have scored in the current week, the puzzles you have already banked so that the same win cannot be counted twice, a two letter country code, and a first name and initial if you gave one. The country comes from the IP address the request arrived on, which our host already knows. We do not ask your browser for your location, and the IP address itself is not stored.

All of it is public. That is what a leaderboard is: your number, your flag, your points and your name if you gave one can be seen by anybody playing the game. Do not put anything beside your number that you would not want a stranger to read.

A name is optional and can be changed or removed at any time from the menu. It is limited to a first name and one initial on purpose, so that nobody puts their full name on a public board without meaning to.

Points reset every week. A number that has scored nothing for three months is released and can be given to somebody else, at which point nothing connects it to you at all. To remove yourself sooner, clear your site data, which detaches this browser from the number, and write to us at the address below if you also want the row itself deleted. Tell us the number, which you can read on the leaderboard panel.

Who else is on the page

Three Google services run on the game, and each of them receives your IP address because your browser contacts them directly:

• Google Analytics measures how the game is used: visits, sessions, rough location from the IP address, device and browser. It is not used to work out who anyone is.
• Google AdSense serves the advertising that pays for the game. Google may set cookies or use an advertising identifier to choose which ads to show, and those ads may be personalised depending on your own settings and where you are.
• Google Fonts serves the two typefaces the game is set in.

What Google then does with that is covered by Google's privacy policy. You can change how ads are chosen for you at My Ad Center, and you can opt out of Google Analytics with Google's browser add-on.

Cookies

We set none of our own. Any cookie you find on wordspool.app was set by one of the Google services named above.

Children

Wordspool is a word game for a general audience. It is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.

Changes

If what this page says stops being true, this page changes, and the date at the top changes with it.

Contact

Questions about any of the above, or about something you want removed, go to admin@wordspool.app.