Privacy

The short version

You can play every game here without an account. Doing so means that no personally identifiable information about you is shared with our system.

Making an account allows us to collect your email address, which allows your gameplay to be saved.

Everything below is detail on these two statements. It is long because being specific is the best way we know to share all that you should know.

Playing without an account

This is the default. In this mode, games run in your browser, without saving any personally identifiable information. Your scores, your streak and your settings are written to your own browser’s local storage, on your own device.

What is kept there:

• Your settings for each game — theme, difficulty level, and so on.
• The current day’s result for each game, so reopening the page shows your score rather than restarting the day.
• A short history of past days, so the game can show a streak. Entries older than 90 days are deleted automatically the next time you open the site.
• Select game-specific data.

Without an account, the games show you only today’s result. The short history above is still kept on your device — it is not shown, and it is not sent anywhere. It is kept precisely so that it is not lost: the day you make an account, the days you already played on this browser are added to it rather than thrown away. Nothing you play here is discarded for want of an account.

This is not a cookie, it is not transmitted anywhere, and clearing this site’s data in your browser settings erases it permanently. We cannot read it, recover it, or see that it exists.

The device identifier

The first time you play, your browser generates a random identifier — a string of 36 characters with no meaning — and stores it locally under the key ps:device. It is not derived from your hardware, your network, or anything about you.

This random ID exists so that if you later make an account, the scores this browser already holds can be attached to it instead of being thrown away. Clearing your browser data generates a new one, and the old one becomes permanently unclaimable.

Account information

An account is optional. Having an account allows your information to survive, even if erased on a particular device; allows you to sync activity between devices; lets your daily result be ranked alongside other players’; and gives you access to select game features. Every account keeps every result, whatever its type — what the account type changes is how much of that record is shown back to you, never how much of it is kept.

Creating an account means that the following will be stored:

• Your email address. It is the recovery address and the sign-in method; it is never shown to other players, never sold, never rented, and never used for marketing.
• A display name, a handle and an avatar, if you choose them. These are visible to select other users.
• A time zone, if your browser offers one, and used only for display, such as telling you how long is left in the day. Puzzle days are decided in UTC for everybody, everywhere.
• Timestamps: when the account was created, and when it was last used.
• Which sign-in methods are attached — email, Google, or both.
• Your account type — Free or Sapien — and, for Sapien, the date it runs until. If you redeem a promotion code, which code and when, so that each code can be used only once per account.
• Whether your email address has had the free two-day Sapien trial. This is kept as a one-way scrambled code made from the address (a keyed hash), not the address itself, so it can only answer “has this address had a trial?”.

Signing in

There are no passwords on this gaming site.

Email sign-in. We send a six-digit code to the address you give us. What we store is a cryptographic hash of that code, not the code; it expires after ten minutes, can be used once, and is destroyed after five wrong attempts. The same mail also carries a link that does the same thing, for convenience on a desktop. Asking for a code always answers the same way whether or not that address has an account, so no one can use this page to discover whether you have one.

Google sign-in. If you choose Google sign-in, Google tells us your email address and a stable identifier for your Google account, and we store those two things. Google learns that you signed in to PlaySapien. We do not collect any Google contacts, Google profile data, or Google activity data.

Your session. Once you are signed in, your browser holds one cookie. It is HttpOnly, Secure and SameSite=Lax, which means it cannot be read by scripts and is not sent to other sites. On our side we store only a hash of its value, never the value itself, alongside when the session was created and last used, a truncated description of your browser, and the two-letter country our host reports — which is there so the “your devices” list can say Firefox, Ghana and let you spot a session that is not yours. No city, no street, no precise location, no IP address retained by us. Sessions last a year and renew on use, so signing in is roughly a once-per-device event.

When you finish a game while signed in, your browser posts the result to our server. This includes information such as: which game, which day, which mode, your score, the maximum available, how long you took, and other select details — mostly the same information the game shows you on its results screen.

Scores

Your scores are included in the aggregate reporting of scores. This is true of every account, Free and Sapien alike: a daily result is ranked the same way whoever played it. The account type decides how far back you can look at your own record, not whether a day of yours counts.

Your individual scores appear on leaderboards, shown beside whatever display name and avatar you have chosen — never beside your email address, which is not shown to other players under any setting. You control how far that goes:

• Public — your result can appear on a leaderboard open to every player. This is the default.
• Friends only — your result is shown only to people whose friend request you have accepted.
• Off — your result is not shown beside your name to anyone. It still counts towards aggregate totals, which describe a population and identify no one.

Leaderboards are being built and are not live yet. Until they are, no score of yours is shown to anyone but a friend you have accepted, and the setting above will be on your profile before the first board goes live — not after it.

Friends

There are two ways to invite a friend: share your invite code (eight characters, which you can change at any time), or type the email address of someone you already know.

Typing an address is built so that it cannot be used to find out who has an account. Whatever you type, we answer “Sent.” If the address belongs to a player, the invite appears on their Friends card and no email is sent. If it does not, we send that address one short invitation email — at most one every 30 days, however many people invite it — and keep the invite so that it is waiting if they join with that address. There is no directory to browse, no partial matching and no list of results — only an exact address you already had.

For an address with no account we keep a one-way scrambled code made from the address (a keyed hash), never the address itself, along with who invited it and when. It is deleted when that person joins, when the inviter deletes their account, or after 90 days. Every invitation email has a link to stop invitation emails to that address; if it is used, we keep the scrambled code so that we never send it another.

Invites you receive wait on your Friends card, up to 30 at a time, where you can accept, leave for later, reject, or block the sender. A blocked player cannot invite you or see you, and is never told; your block list is visible only to you, and you can remove anyone from it at any time. If a player’s invites are rejected several times in a short period, their invites are paused for a while; to make that work we record, for 30 days, that an invite was rejected and by whom.

We store the friendship (who, with whom, its state, and when), and your current invite code. Removing a friend removes their access to your results immediately.

Friend groups you make (for example “Family”) are your own private lists: we store each group’s name and which of your friends are in it, only you can see them, and the friends in a group are not told. Removing or blocking a friend takes them out of your groups; deleting a group, or your account, deletes it.

We also store short in-app notices to and from friends (for example, friend requests and acceptance notices) until you have read them.

Puzzle submissions

Select games let you submit a puzzle of your own. If you do, we store the puzzle, an optional credit line, and the result of an automated review. Approved puzzles may be published to every player, with your credit if you gave one.

Something that does not go away when you delete your account. If a submission is rejected for a safety reason, a record of it is kept in a moderation log. The log exists to make a pattern of abuse visible across submissions, and is retained upon deletion of the account that created it, so that it survives account deletion and re-registering. This is an exception to the deletion rule below.

Who else is involved

Cloudflare hosts the site, the API and the database. Like any web host, their servers receive the technical details every request carries — your IP address, the page requested, your browser and operating system, and the time — and use them to deliver the page and protect the site from attack. They retain those logs for a limited period as our processor. We do not build profiles from them and do not link them to your account. See Cloudflare’s privacy policy.

Resend delivers the sign-in codes and the occasional notification. They process your email address for that purpose only.

Google Fonts serves the three typefaces the site uses. That request tells Google your IP address and roughly what browser you are using, as any request to any server would. Google states that it does not use Google Fonts requests to build advertising profiles. A content blocker will stop the request and the site falls back to fonts already on your device.

Google, additionally, if and only if you choose Google sign-in, as described above.

Paddle, if and only if you subscribe to Sapien. Paddle.com is our online reseller and the Merchant of Record for Sapien subscriptions: it takes the payment, works out and collects any sales tax or VAT, sends receipts and issues refunds. You give your payment details to Paddle directly at checkout; they never reach PlaySapien. Paddle tells us that a subscription exists, its status and its dates, and which account it belongs to, so we can switch Sapien on and off. Paddle handles your payment information under its own privacy policy.

There is no analytics provider, no advertising network, no tag manager, no session recorder, no A/B testing service, and no third-party embed.

Cookies

One cookie, set only after you sign in, holding only a session identifier. No cookies are set for anonymous play, and none are currently used for advertising, analytics or tracking. Because the cookie is strictly necessary for a function you asked for, there is no consent banner.

How long things are kept

• Sign-in codes — ten minutes, then they expire and are cleaned up.
• Sessions — one year from last use, or until you sign out or revoke the device.
• Results and streaks — for as long as your account exists. They are the point of the account.
• Local browser history — 90 days, pruned automatically on your own device.
• Moderation records — indefinitely, with the author removed on account deletion, as described above.
• Invites to an address with no account — 90 days, or until that person joins (scrambled code only, as described above). A request to stop invitation emails is kept for as long as the service runs.
• Rejected invites — 30 days, for the pause described above.
• The free-trial record — indefinitely, including after account deletion, so that each email address gets one free trial. It is the scrambled code described above, never the address itself.

Deleting your account

There is a delete button on your profile. It removes your account, your email address, your sign-in methods, your sessions, your results, your streaks, your friendships, your invite codes and your notices. This is a real deletion from the database, not a flag, and it cannot be undone. The exceptions are the moderation log and the free-trial record described above; neither contains your email address.

Your rights

Depending on where you live you may have a legal right to access, correct, export or delete the personal information a service holds about you, and to object to its processing. On PlaySapien that amounts to one email address, your account settings and a list of puzzle scores. All of it is removed by the delete button on your profile, and you can ask for a copy of any of it at info@playsapien.com.

Children

The games are suitable for all ages and can be played entirely without an account, which collects nothing. We do not knowingly create accounts for children under 13.

Security

Sign-in codes and session identifiers are stored only as hashes. The session cookie is HttpOnly and Secure. Sign-in attempts are rate-limited. We store no passwords, because we never collect any. If something does go wrong in a way that affects you, we will tell you at the address you signed up with.

Changes

If what PlaySapien collects changes, this page is rewritten before the change ships and the date at the top changes with it. Information collected under this version will not be repurposed under a later one.

Contact

Questions about this page, any requests regarding your data, or anything else may be submitted to info@playsapien.com.

This site is owned and operated by PlaySapien.