Legal
Terms of use
1. About us
puzzlelot.com and its game pages (the “Site”) are operated by Crebo Ltd. In these terms, “PuzzleLot”, “we”, “us” and “our” mean Crebo Ltd, and “you” and “your” mean you as a user of the Site.
2. Accepting these terms
These terms, together with the privacy and cookie notices below, are the rules for your use of the Site. By using the Site you agree to them. If you do not agree, please do not use the Site. We may amend them from time to time; the date above shows when they last changed, and continuing to use the Site after a change means you accept it.
3. The games
A new puzzle in each daily game is free to play, and the Site carries no advertising. Other parts of the Site, such as the archives of past puzzles, may be offered free of charge, as part of a paid membership, or on some other basis, and we may change which is which. We provide the games as they are. We do not promise that the Site will always be available, that it will be free of errors, or that a particular puzzle or feature will continue to exist, and we may change or withdraw any part of it at any time.
4. Your account
You can play without an account. If you create one, you do so with your email address and a single-use code; there is no password to remember. Keep access to your email secure, since anyone who can read it can sign in as you. You may delete your account at any time from your account page, and doing so removes your saved progress as described in the privacy notice.
5. Our materials
We own or license all intellectual property rights in the Site and everything on it, including the puzzles, text, images, designs and software. Copyright © Crebo Ltd. All rights are reserved. The name PuzzleLot, our logos and our game names are ours.
You may use the Site for your own personal, non-commercial enjoyment. You must not reproduce, republish, distribute or otherwise exploit the Site or its contents for any commercial purpose without our written consent.
6. Ideas you send us
If you send us a puzzle suggestion or feedback, you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use it to run and improve PuzzleLot, including building a puzzle based on it, without any obligation to you. Please do not send us anything confidential, and please do not send us anything that is not yours to send.
7. Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- use the Site in any way that breaks any applicable law;
- attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Site, or to any server, system or account connected to it;
- transmit any malware or other harmful material;
- interfere with the working of the Site, or probe or test its security;
- use any robot, scraper or other automated means to access the Site without our permission;
- do anything that spoils anyone else's use of the Site.
8. Links and supporting us
Supporting the project is entirely optional and buys no additional features. If you choose to, payment is taken on Stripe's own hosted page, governed by their terms and privacy notice rather than ours — we never see or hold your card details. Afterwards you may leave a name and a message on our support page. The name, the fact that you supported us and the date are published on the Site for anyone to read, whether or not you write a message; the message is published too if you leave one. Both fields are optional, and leaving the name blank lists you as anonymous. Please do not include anything you would not want shown publicly. Ask us and we will take it down. The Site also links to other places we do not control, each governed by its own terms. If we later offer a paid membership, it will have its own terms, set out before you pay.
9. Liability
Nothing here affects your statutory rights, and nothing limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.
Subject to that, we are not liable for any indirect or consequential loss, for loss of data or saved progress, or for any loss arising from the Site being unavailable or containing an error. Our total liability to you in connection with the Site will not exceed £100, or the amount you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim, whichever is greater.
10. Governing law
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere, you keep the benefit of any mandatory protections of your own country's law.
11. Contact
Questions about these terms: hello@puzzlelot.com, or write to us at Crebo Ltd, 66 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NA.
Privacy
Who is responsible
Crebo Ltd is the data controller for personal data collected through the Site. Our registered office is 66 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NA. For anything to do with data protection, email privacy@puzzlelot.com.
We are not required to appoint a statutory Data Protection Officer and have not done so. Responsibility for data protection sits with the directors.
What we collect
You can play every puzzle without giving us anything. If you sign in, we hold:
- Your email address, which is how you sign in and how we send your single-use code.
- A display name, if you set one. It is yours to choose and need not be your real name.
- Your sign-in records — the time you signed in, your IP address and your browser's user agent string. These are kept with the session so that we can keep you signed in and spot abuse.
- Your gameplay — which puzzles you have completed and when, how long you took, your saved progress on a puzzle in play, and your streaks and totals.
Separately, if you send us a puzzle suggestion we keep what you wrote, and your email address if you chose to give one so we could reply.
If you support us, we keep the name and the message you chose to give on the payment page, along with the date. These are published on the Site. Both fields are optional: leave the name blank and you are listed as anonymous, and leave the message blank and only the fact that you supported us is shown. We never publish the amount, and we never publish the name on your card.
We do not collect special category data. The Site is a general-audience puzzle site and is not directed at children; we do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 13.
Why we use it, and our lawful basis
- Running your account and saving your progress — contract: this is the service you asked us for when you signed in.
- Sending your sign-in code — contract: without it you cannot sign in.
- Keeping the Site working and secure — legitimate interests: keeping the games available and protecting them from abuse.
- Counting page views — legitimate interests: understanding which puzzles get played, using analytics that set no cookies and build no profile of you.
- Replying to a suggestion — legitimate interests: answering someone who asked to hear back.
We do not use your data for advertising, we do not sell it, and we do not make decisions about you by automated means or profile you.
Who else sees it
We use a small number of providers, who act on our instructions and may not use your data for their own purposes:
- Neon — the database holding your account and gameplay. Hosted in London (UK).
- Vercel — hosting and the cookieless page-view analytics. Infrastructure in the United States and Europe.
- Resend — sends your sign-in code. United States.
- Google Fonts — one typeface on the Site is requested from Google's servers as the page loads, which tells Google your IP address and which page you are viewing. Google's own privacy notice governs that.
- Stripe — only if you choose to support us. Stripe takes the payment on its own hosted page and is a separate controller for what you give it; we never receive your card details. We ask Stripe only whether a payment completed, so that the message you leave can be published.
We may also disclose personal data where we must in order to comply with a legal obligation, or to protect our rights, our players or others.
Sending data abroad
Some providers above are outside the United Kingdom. Where personal data goes to a country not covered by a UK adequacy decision, the transfer is protected by the International Data Transfer Agreement, or by the UK Addendum to the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
How long we keep it
- Your account, and the gameplay attached to it — until you delete your account. Deleting it removes your completions, saved games and stats, and unlinks any suggestion you sent from you.
- Sign-in records, including IP address — up to 30 days, after which the session expires and the record is removed.
- Puzzle suggestions — up to two years, so we can work through them.
Your rights
Under the UK GDPR you have the right to be given a copy of your personal data (a subject access request), to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to have its use restricted while a question is resolved, to receive it in a portable format, and to object to processing we carry out on the basis of legitimate interests.
You can delete your account and its data yourself at any time from your account page. For anything else, email privacy@puzzlelot.com. We may ask you to confirm your identity first, so that we do not hand your data to someone who is not you. We will respond within one month.
Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data, please tell us first at privacy@puzzlelot.com. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.