Privacy Policy

The short version

wordsearchr is a free word-search puzzle site. We collect as little as possible, there are no accounts, and we never sell your data. This page explains the details.

What we collect

You can play puzzles, download printables, and use the puzzle maker without signing up or giving us any personal details. The limited data we do handle is:

• Saved puzzles: if you use the Maker and click "Save & get share link", we store that puzzle's title, word list, and settings so the link works. Saved puzzles are not public, are not indexed by search engines, and are automatically deleted after 30 days.
• AI word suggestions: if you use the "✨ Generate" button, the theme you type is sent to our AI provider (Anthropic) to generate words. We keep only short-lived technical logs of these requests to monitor cost and prevent abuse.
• Anti-bot check: the Maker uses Cloudflare Turnstile to tell humans from bots. Turnstile may process limited technical information from your browser to complete that check.
• Server logs: like most websites, our host (Cloudflare) records basic request data such as IP address and browser type, used only for security, rate-limiting, and keeping the site reliable.

What we don’t do

• No advertising trackers, and no selling or sharing of your personal data.
• No analytics profiles tied to your identity.
• No knowing collection of personal information from children; the site is family-friendly and requires no account.

Cookies

We use no advertising cookies and no cross-site tracking cookies. Two things may store something in your browser:

• Google Analytics: cookies named _ga and _ga_* that count visits and tell repeat visits apart. They expire after two years, or sooner if you turn analytics off or clear them.
• Cloudflare Turnstile: a temporary token needed to complete the human-verification check in the Maker. This is strictly necessary for the check to work and is not used for tracking.

Your analytics choice itself is remembered in your browser’s local storage, not in a cookie.

Analytics

We use Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is cookieless, doesn’t fingerprint you, and builds no profile — it just counts visits and pages.

We also use Google Analytics 4. It records pages viewed, approximate location (city level, from a truncated IP), device and browser type, and referring site. We use it to see which puzzles and languages are worth more work. We don’t use it for advertising, don’t enable Google Signals or ads personalisation, and don’t combine it with any other data. Google processes this data as our processor; event-level data is retained for 2 months. See Google’s own privacy policy for how they handle it.

Where the law requires us to ask permission first — the EU, the wider EEA, the UK, and Switzerland — we do. A banner appears and nothing from Google loads until you accept: decline or ignore it and no Google script runs and no Google cookie is set. Everywhere else, analytics starts with the page and you can switch it off whenever you like.

To turn analytics off (or back on), wherever you are, click "Cookies" in the footer of any page. Turning it off stops Google Analytics loading and deletes the _ga cookies already in your browser.

Your choices

• Saving a puzzle is optional: it only happens when you click the share button. Don’t save puzzles you don’t want stored.
• Saved puzzles delete themselves after 30 days. To have one removed sooner, contact us with the share link.

Changes & contact

If this policy changes, we’ll update the date at the top of this page. Questions about privacy? Reach us via the Contact page.