Privacy policy

Who we are, and what this covers

Pathwords at pathwords.co is published by Pathwords. This policy covers the website: the playable board, the how-to, about, and this page. The iOS app Pathwords Puzzle is a different property with its own document at /app-privacy (unlisted, noindex). Questions: privacy@pathwords.co.

What the site stores on your device

There is no Pathwords account and no Pathwords login. Found words, scores, settings, streaks, hint counts, and a schema version are written to this browser using IndexedDB when it is available, with a localStorage fallback, and an in-memory fallback if both are blocked. Keys are prefixed for this origin. Clearing site data for pathwords.co erases them. We do not upload that progress to a Pathwords server.

A small pending-write mirror may sit in localStorage so a setting change is not lost if the tab closes mid-write. Sound, if you turn it on, is synthesised in the page; it does not download an audio library.

What the site fetches

The app requests a puzzle manifest and the JSON file for the day and mode you opened, from /puzzles/ on this origin. It may prefetch a few upcoming days so a later visit still works offline. Those files are game data. They are disallowed in robots.txt and are not listed in the sitemap.

Fonts load from Google Fonts. A house rewarded video, if you ask for extra hints, loads from this origin (/promo/rewarded-house.mp4). That overlay is a house creative, not a Google ad unit.

Google AdSense

On pages that already have publisher content — a loaded playable board, this site’s how-to, and about — Pathwords may load Google AdSense (publisher ID pub-3031358398757268, also written as ca-pub-3031358398757268). Google and its advertising partners may place and read cookies, use pixels or similar beacons, and collect IP address, user agent, and the page URL to serve, measure, and limit ads.

Third parties do this as a result of ad serving. We do not sell a Pathwords user profile; we also do not pretend the only network call is the day’s puzzle file. That older line was wrong once AdSense was present, and it is not repeated here.

Read How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps and Google’s advertising cookies. You can use Google’s ad settings to manage personalization where Google offers that control.

Google ads are not loaded on Boot or an empty board, on Settings, on the complete sheet, on an error or 404, on the rewarded house overlay, or on privacy pages. Overlay Auto-ad formats are not something this site turns on from the page. House banners in the play layout stay house banners.

EEA, United Kingdom, and Switzerland

Personalized ads in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland require a certified consent platform under Google’s EU User Consent Policy. Pathwords has not shipped that platform on this site yet. Until it does, ad requests from those regions should not be treated as consented personalized ads. Limited or non-personalized serving is the fallback Google documents when consent is not collected. Shipping a certified message is planned work; it is not claimed as done on this page.

Kids, and who this site is for

Pathwords is a general-audience puzzle. It is not directed at children under 13 and it is not a Made for Kids site. Kids mode is a Settings toggle that loads an easier Classic or Mini word list and a separate streak. It is not a separate URL and it does not change the fact that the default audience is general. If that positioning ever changes, this policy will say so and ad treatment will follow.

Other third parties

Google AdSense and Google Fonts are the third-party network services this website uses. We do not run a first-party analytics product. If another third party is added, this page will name it. Do not read silence as “no network calls”; the puzzle files, fonts, and AdSense are already named above.

Contact

Pathwords · privacy@pathwords.co. This page has no advertisements.