Cookie Policy
This page explains what puzzle-me.com stores on your device, why, and how to change it. It sits alongside our Privacy Policy, which covers everything else.
What a cookie is
A cookie is a small text file that a website asks your browser to keep. Next time you load a page, the browser hands the file back, so the site can recognise the same device — remembering that you already answered the consent message, for instance. Cookies cannot run programs and cannot read the rest of your computer. Some are set by this site, others by third parties such as advertising providers.
Browsers also offer localStorage, which works like a cookie's quieter cousin: it stays on your device and is never sent to a server unless the site's code deliberately sends it.
Strictly necessary
One cookie is genuinely necessary: the one that records your consent choice. Without it the site would have to ask you about cookies on every single page. It stores only your answer and the date, lasts about six months, and needs no consent because it exists to comply with the law.
Two things people expect to find here are not cookies at all. Your leaderboard nickname and the random anonymous identifier your browser generates are kept in localStorage. They stay on your device. The identifier is what lets the site recognise your own entries so you can improve a score rather than duplicate it. They are only ever transmitted at the moment you actively submit a result to a leaderboard.
Functional
Also in localStorage, also local only: your game preferences (difficulty, sound, dark mode), the way you chose to sort the game list and your personal bests. This is what makes the site remember how you like to play. Nothing here reaches our server, and clearing your browser data erases it for good — including any personal best you have not submitted to a leaderboard.
Analytics
If audience measurement is active on the site, it runs only after you accept it. It counts visits, pages and games in aggregate so we know which puzzles people actually play. IP addresses are anonymised. If you refuse, nothing is measured and nothing changes for you.
Advertising
Puzzle-Me is free because of advertising. Ads are served by Google through the AdSense programme, along with Google's advertising partners, and they use cookies to choose ads, cap how often you see the same one, and detect invalid clicks.
The ones you are most likely to see:
__gads— set by Google to serve and measure ads on this site. Typically up to about 13 months.__gpi— used by Google to limit repetition and support ad selection. Typically up to about 13 months.IDE— set by Google's advertising domain to measure whether an ad led to an action. Up to about two years.
Others may appear depending on which partners take part in an auction. Durations range from a few months to two years.
Refusing advertising cookies does not cost you anything. The whole site keeps working, every game stays free, and you still see ads — but non-personalised ones, chosen from the content of the page and a rough location rather than from your browsing history.
Google explains how it uses data from sites that use its products at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites, and you can manage your own ad settings at myadcenter.google.com.
How to change your choices
On this site. Click Cookie settings in the footer of any page. The consent message reopens and your previous answer is there to be changed. It takes effect immediately.
In your browser. You can block or delete cookies for any site, including this one. Note that blocking everything also erases the cookie that records your consent, so the message will come back:
Most browsers also have a private window and a "clear data on close" setting, which wipes cookies and localStorage together — and with them your saved preferences and personal bests.
Questions
If anything here is unclear, or you want a leaderboard entry removed, write to us through the Contact page. The Privacy Policy explains your rights in full, including how to complain to the Portuguese data protection authority.
