Privacy policy

What this site collects

Nothing you type is stored against you. When you enter a clue or a set of letters, the query is used to search the archive and answer you. It is not attached to an identity, because there is no identity to attach it to.

Three things are unavoidable or chosen by you:

• Server request logs. Our host records the usual details of a web request — IP address, the page asked for, the time, the browser’s user-agent string. These exist to serve the site and to defend it from abuse, and are kept for 14 days.
• Your cookie choice. Stored in your own browser so you are not asked again. It never leaves your device.
• Analytics and advertising, only if you allow them. Both are switched off until you say otherwise. See below.

There is no newsletter, no mailing list, no contact form and no account, so no name, email address or postal address is ever asked for or held.

Cookies and similar storage

Nothing beyond the strictly necessary loads until you choose. If you refuse, or simply never answer, this site makes no third-party requests at all — the advertising and analytics scripts are not loaded, not merely told to behave.

Strictly necessary

Your consent choice, held in your browser’s local storage, and the server request logs described above. This category cannot be switched off, because without it the site cannot remember that you refused.

Analytics

If allowed, Google Analytics counts which pages are used so we know which parts of the archive are worth extending. IP addresses are truncated and Google’s advertising signals are switched off on the analytics tag.

Advertising

If allowed, Google AdSense may set cookies to select and measure advertising, including personalised advertising. Refusing does not remove the adverts; it means they are not tailored to you.

You can change any of this at any time using Cookie choices in the footer of every page. One honest limitation: withdrawing consent stops the scripts loading from then on, but it cannot un-run a script that already ran in the current page. Reload, and the page is clean.

Who else is involved

Only Google, and only for the categories you allow — AdSense for advertising and Analytics for page counts. Both process data on their own terms and may transfer it outside your country, including to the United States. Nothing is sold to data brokers, and there are no other trackers, pixels, social widgets or embedded third-party content on this site.

Do not sell or share my personal information

We do not sell personal information for money. California law treats the use of advertising cookies for cross-context behavioural advertising as “sharing” even so, and gives you the right to opt out.

To opt out: open Cookie choices in the footer and refuse the advertising category, or refuse everything. That is the opt-out — no account and no email address needed.

This site also honours the Global Privacy Control signal. If your browser or extension sends it, advertising stays off and cannot be switched on here, even by clicking accept.

Your rights

Because the site holds no account and no identifier for you, there is usually nothing to retrieve or delete: a request-log entry cannot be tied back to a person by us. The rights that do apply, and how to use them, are set out on our data rights page, which covers the UK and EU regimes as well as California.

Children

This site is not directed at children and asks for no personal information from anyone, of any age.

Changes

Material changes will be reflected in the date at the top of this page. Because there is no mailing list, there is no way to notify you directly, so the date is the record.