Last updated 25 September 2026
LadderWords is a daily word puzzle. It is built to need as little of your data as a game can get away with. This page says, in plain language, exactly what that means.
Your game state, streak, and statistics live in your browser's local storage, on your device. So does a random identifier (a string of letters and numbers, generated the first time you visit). It is pseudonymous: it lets us recognise this browser from one day to the next, but it isn't linked to you as a person and we hold nothing that could connect it to you. Clearing your browser's site data erases all of this — including, fairly enough, your streak — and mints a fresh identifier next time.
Because it lives only there, your streak doesn't follow you around: each browser on each device keeps its own, and a copy of the game added to your home screen counts as its own separate "browser" too. If your streak matters to you, play in one place — or sign in.
You can sign in with your email address and a 6-digit code we send you; there is no password. We then keep, against your account, one row per day you finished a ladder: the date, the puzzle number, whether you solved it or gave up, your step count and solve time, and which client (web or app) it came from. That is what lets the same streak and statistics appear on every device you sign in on. Your email address is used to send the code and to identify your account, nothing else: no newsletters, no reminders, unless you ask for them later. The rows are never joined to the random identifier above. You can sign out at any time, and "Delete account" in Your stats removes the account and its rows from our servers straight away; what is on your device stays yours.
When you play, your browser sends us pseudonymous gameplay telemetry: the words you entered in the puzzle, your step count and solve time, and that random identifier, which links your plays across days so we can tell returning players from new ones. Alongside it we record coarse context — device type, operating system, browser family, and the two-letter country code our hosting provider derives from your connection. Errors the page hits are reported the same way. None of it identifies you, and we never combine it with anything that could.
If you email us a problem report from the support page, the draft includes that identifier and your browser's name so we can look at what happened on your device. You see the draft before it goes and can delete either line; an idea draft carries neither.
Gameplay telemetry is kept while it is useful for calibrating the puzzles and for the review pages' census. Raw event rows — page events, dictionary misses, error reports — are kept for up to 18 months and then deleted. Solve routes (which contain only dictionary words) and the daily aggregates behind the review pages are kept indefinitely. Clearing your browser's site data removes the identifier and everything stored on your device, but not what we have already received — those rows simply can no longer be connected to anything you play afterwards. Aggregated figures (the percentages on a review page) are kept indefinitely.
Two things. First, calibrating the puzzles — telemetry tells us which ladders are gentle and which are cruel, so the difficulty curve improves. Second, the daily review page's census, which shows how the crowd fared — always as percentages across all players, never as individual results.
The site is served by Cloudflare, which — like any network host — handles IP addresses in transit to deliver the site. Gameplay telemetry, and account rows if you sign in, are stored in a managed database operated by an infrastructure provider on our behalf; sign-in codes are sent through an email delivery provider, which sees your address for that purpose only. We also use Cloudflare's cookieless, privacy-preserving web analytics to see aggregate visit counts and page performance. Definitions link out to Wiktionary; following such a link is subject to that site's own practices.
If what we collect ever changes, this page changes first, and the date at the top moves.
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