Privacy

Last updated 12 November 2026

I'm one person in Tennessee, USA, running Scintilla at scintilla.day. The short version:

• No accounts, names or email. No ads, no analytics or visit tracking, and no cookies set by the game's own code.
• Your game is saved in your own browser. When you finish today's puzzle, the run (your stops, misses and score, under a random ID with no name) goes to Scintilla's score store so stop counts and ranks can be worked out.
• Your IP address, which counts as personal information, reaches Cloudflare, Wikimedia and Google. The score store keeps only a salted hash of it, for 2 days.
• If I add visit counts or ads, this page will change first.

What stays on your device

The game uses your browser's local storage (a small save file), not cookies. It holds each day's run (stops and their worth, wrong guesses, hints, score), your nights running, whether you saw the rules, whether you have seen the morning result, and the random ID described below. Past days stay until you clear site data for this site.

What the score store keeps

When you finish today's puzzle on your first try, win or lose, your browser sends the run to the score store, a small program Scintilla runs on Cloudflare. Practice runs and earlier puzzles are not sent. For each run it stores:

• a random ID made in your browser and kept there (in local storage, as is_id). It is not tied to a name, an account, an email or a device. Clearing site data makes a new one, and runs sent under the old one stay under the old one. Even without a name, a lasting ID counts as personal information.
• the puzzle number, the article titles you used as stops and the forecast number the game attached to each, how many wrong guesses, hints and undone cards you had, whether you reached the end, your score, and the time the run arrived.

The ID is made the first time you open the game, not when you finish. Each time you open the game after that, your browser sends the ID to the score store to ask for your result from the night before (your final score and rank, and how rare your stops were). That request carries the ID and the puzzle number and nothing else.

Runs are kept indefinitely: nothing deletes them automatically. They are where the per-stop counts, the spread of scores, ranks and the best route of the night come from. Other players see those totals and their own rank, never your ID. The night's best route is shown to everyone with its stops and score, and the night's three rarest stops are shown with how many players used each, all without any ID. Otherwise nobody sees your route unless you send it yourself: a "Compete with a friend" link carries your score and stops.

Separately, to cap runs at 30 a day per network, the store keeps a salted SHA-256 hash of your IP address with a count of runs sent that day. Your raw IP address is never written. These rows are deleted after 2 days.

The store does not keep names, emails, cookies (none are set), your browser's user agent, your raw IP address, your location, or anything else your browser sends. The store's own program writes no request logs beyond an error line with no player data. It cannot look a run up by person, only by its random ID.

Who your browser talks to

• Cloudflare hosts the site and runs the score store, so it sees your IP address and request details and logs your browser's requests to deliver and protect the service, under its privacy policy.
• Wikimedia: when the game loads, and each time you enter a stop or ask for a hint, your browser asks English Wikipedia and Wikimedia's pageviews service directly. Wikimedia receives your IP address, browser details, those lookups and this site's address, under its privacy policy. Those lookups never pass through me.
• Google: fonts load from Google Fonts, so Google receives the same details, under its privacy policy.

Each keeps its records under its own policy, in the United States and other countries. For EU and UK visitors, my legal basis for hosting, Wikipedia lookups and the score store is "legitimate interest": I need them to run a working game, and shared stop counts and ranks are how the game is scored.

If I add ads (not yet)

Ads would sit in the side margins on desktop and on the results screen, from an outside ad company. It and its partners would use cookies and other saved identifiers to show, measure and, where you allow it, personalize ads, and would see your IP address and browser details.

In the EU and UK you would be asked first and could change your mind anytime. Where US state law gives the right, there would be a "do not sell or share" link, and a Global Privacy Control signal would count as that opt-out. Opting out stops personalized ads, not ads or all ad cookies. I would not knowingly allow personalized ads for anyone under 13. I would not send your random ID to any ad company. Before the first ad, this page will name the company and link its opt-outs.

Children

Scintilla is a general-audience game for teenagers and adults, not directed at children under 13, and I do not knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe your child under 13 has sent me any, email me and I will delete it.

Your choices and rights

• Your random ID and everything filed under it are shown in the box below, on this device. You can read the runs or delete them there; nobody else can, because only your browser has the ID.
• Or email hello@scintilla.day to ask what I hold about you, get a copy, or have it fixed or deleted. Send the ID with your request.
• In the EU or UK you can also ask me to stop or limit using it, withdraw consent, and complain to your data protection authority (the ICO in the UK).

Today I do not sell personal information or share it for targeted advertising. I believe US state privacy laws do not apply to a project this small today, but I will answer requests anyway and look again if ads arrive. I have added no third-party trackers and the site does no cross-site tracking, so a "Do Not Track" or Global Privacy Control signal has nothing to turn off today.

Changes

When this page changes, the date at the top changes, and anything big is announced on the game first. I wrote this page myself to describe what the site does. It is not legal advice.