Privacy Notice

When you use the Nerdle solver, the equations and tile feedback you enter are sent to the same NerdleBuddy application so it can validate the rows and rank suggestions. When you play a puzzle, guesses are sent to the application for scoring and hints.

NerdleBuddy does not deliberately add those equations, answers, feedback patterns, or encoded challenge values to analytics events. They may still pass through ordinary application infrastructure needed to answer the request, including transient network processing and operational logs.

A NerdleBuddy account is optional and free, and every solver, guide, and practice feature works without one. Where accounts are enabled, signing in uses Google sign-on only: NerdleBuddy stores the name, email address, and profile image that Google provides, plus the timestamps of your account and sign-ins. NerdleBuddy never sees your Google password and does not request access to anything else in your Google account.

Signing in sets session cookies on nerdlebuddy.com so you stay signed in; they are functional cookies, not advertising identifiers. Account details are held in NerdleBuddy’s own database and are not sold or shared for advertising.

While you are signed in, finishing a puzzle saves a game record — which puzzle, your guesses, the outcome, whether hints were used, and when you finished — to power your private history, stats, and streaks on the profile page. Saving a game also stores your browser's IANA time-zone name (for example "Europe/London") with your account so streaks and the daily turnover follow your local calendar; it is never your precise location and is deleted with your account. Signed-out play saves nothing. These records are private to your account and are removed when you delete it.

Finishing a puzzle without signing in creates a lightweight guest account so your points and streaks persist — it stores only the games you finish, no name or email address. Guest data that never records a game is deleted after 30 days, and dormant guest data after 180 days. Signing in with Google moves everything to your permanent account.

Finished games earn on-site points and XP, and so do guide-reading rewards, buried-treasure finds, and a small once-a-day return bonus. NerdleBuddy stores your balance and a private ledger of each award (what kind of award, its amounts, and when — including which guides you claimed, which treasures you found, and which days the return bonus was paid) so totals stay accurate and can be audited. Your player tier and its earning bonuses are derived from that same activity — lifetime points, recent play days, streaks, and recent referrals — plus one anonymous comparison of your recent totals against overall player activity; no other player's individual activity is ever shown to you, and yours is never shown to them. Points and XP have no monetary value, cannot be purchased or transferred, are visible only to you, and are permanently removed with your account.

If you use buddy groups, NerdleBuddy also stores the board name (handle) you choose, which groups you belong to, and the kudos you send and receive (sender, recipient, emoji, and day). Board names and group activity are visible only to members of your groups — never on public pages — and all of it is deleted with your account or when you leave a group. Guests cannot use groups; a Google account is required because boards show names.

Every account can create a shareable referral code. If someone signs up through your code, NerdleBuddy stores who referred whom, the code used, and the date, and shows you the new player's board name or first name with that date on your profile. Referrers also earn bonus points calculated as a percentage of the points their referred player earns during that player's first six months, which means a referrer can see the total bonus each referred player has generated (an aggregate of their activity, never individual games). Opening a referral link stores the code in your own browser until you sign up, claim its welcome points, or clear your browsing data — no account is created just by visiting. All referral records are deleted when either account is deleted.

You can sign out at any time, and the profile page includes a self-service delete that permanently removes the account record and its sign-in link.

This deployment is configured for Google Tag Manager, which loads after the site becomes interactive. Depending on the published container, it can count solver starts, suggestions, games, hints, answer reveals, filters, shares, and guide-to-solver visits.

Page measurement uses normalised URL shapes. For example, an encoded challenge becomes /play-with-nerdlebuddy/:token and a dated archive game becomes /puzzles/archive/:year/:month/:day. Query strings and the original values are not sent in the custom analytics payload.

Vercel Speed Insights measures loading and interaction performance. Before a measurement is sent, NerdleBuddy applies the same route normalisation and removes query strings and identifiers. This helps find slow routes without creating a record for each puzzle URL.

NerdleBuddy does not currently provide an in-app analytics consent prompt or consent management platform. Analytics and consent obligations vary by location. The Tag Manager container ID should remain unset wherever prior consent is required until an appropriate consent solution, vendor disclosures, and retention settings are in place.

The site uses local browser storage for the on-screen keyboard preference, commutative-answer grouping, probe suggestions, and optional feedback prefill. These values describe settings, not your identity. Hint visibility is kept only in page memory and resets on a fresh load.

Clearing site data in your browser resets those preferences. If optional Google measurement is configured, Google may use additional cookies or browser identifiers according to the published Tag Manager container. NerdleBuddy does not currently offer an in-app control for those tags.

NerdleBuddy is hosted on Vercel. Like most hosting providers, Vercel can process request information such as IP address, user agent, route, timestamps, and error details for delivery, security, and operational logging.

Optional Google measurement is provided through Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics. The official-answer page makes a cached server-side request to Nerdle’s public dated answer page; it does not cause each visitor’s browser to request that source.

You can clear nerdlebuddy.com site data in your browser, block cookies or scripts, use browser tracking protection, and leave optional fields unused. Blocking measurement does not prevent the core solver, guides, or games from working, although strict script blocking can affect interactive features.

For a non-personal correction, you can open an issue in the NerdleBuddy project repository. Do not post personal or confidential information in a public issue. A private contact method must be published before optional Google measurement is enabled. The About page explains who maintains the site.

Account details, sessions, and game records are kept for as long as your account exists. Deleting your account permanently removes the account record, its sign-in link, active sessions, and every game record tied to it. Expired sessions, sign-in verification entries, and rate-limit counters are transient operational data with no long-term retention purpose. Ordinary infrastructure logs and backups held by our providers age out on their own schedules.

Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR in Europe or the CCPA in California), you may have rights to access, correct, delete, restrict, or receive a copy of your personal data, and to object to certain processing. We honour these in the most direct way available:

• Access & deletion are self-service: your profile page shows what is stored about you and includes a permanent delete-account action — no request form, no waiting period.
• Correction: your name, email, and avatar come from your Google account; updating them there updates what Google provides at your next sign-in.
• Everything else (data export, objections, questions): raise it through the channel on the About page. We do not sell personal data or share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of on that front.

You also have the right to complain to your local data-protection authority.

The puzzles and solver are suitable for everyone, but accounts are not directed to children: you must be at least 13 (or your country’s minimum age of digital consent) to sign in, per the Terms of Use. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children below that age; if you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.

When the site starts collecting something new — as happened when accounts and game records launched — this notice is updated first and the “last updated” date above changes. Material changes will be visible on this page before they apply to you.