Last updated: August 26, 2026
MakeACrossword.org has no accounts, no logins, and no sign-up forms. We store nothing on our servers — not your puzzles, not your words, not your clues. There is no database. But the site does use Google Analytics and does show advertising, and your puzzle travels inside the web address, which has a consequence worth understanding. The rest of this page explains exactly what that means.
This site has no storage. When you make a crossword, the whole puzzle — your title, your answers, and your clues — is compressed and packed into the web address itself, after the ?d=. That is what makes a share link work without an account: everything the puzzle needs is in the link, so anyone you send it to sees the identical crossword.
It also means the address bar contains your puzzle text. Because web addresses are sent along with every page request, that text is visible to:
For a spelling list or a party puzzle this does not matter. We are telling you anyway, because it would matter if you typed something private. Do not put confidential information into a puzzle.
One thing that does not travel: the letters you type while solving are kept after the # in the address, and text after a # is never sent to any server. Your in-progress answers stay in your browser.
We use Google Analytics 4 to see which pages get visited and how people move through the site. It uses cookies and reports to us only in aggregate — we cannot see individual visitors. You can opt out with the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.
Advertising on this site is served through Mediavine Journey. Journey and its advertising partners may use cookies, device identifiers and similar technologies to select and measure ads, including ads based on your activity on other sites. What they typically receive includes your IP address, browser and device type, the pages you viewed and the time of your visit.
You can limit or opt out of personalised advertising here:
Mediavine’s own disclosures are at mediavine.com/privacy-policy. If you are in a region with consent requirements, a consent prompt is presented before personalised ads are served, and you can change your choice at any time through that prompt.
Loading this site fetches a few things from elsewhere. Each of those companies sees your IP address simply because your browser asked them for a file:
There are no fonts, libraries, trackers, or embedded widgets loaded from anywhere else. The puzzle itself is generated entirely in your browser.
Cloudflare records ordinary access information — IP address, browser type, addresses requested, timestamps — for security and debugging, and discards it on its normal schedule. We do not sell or share it, and we run no database of our own.
We do not require or accept accounts. We set no cookies of our own. We have no contact forms, mailing list, or newsletter, and we do not collect email addresses. We do not save your puzzles. We do not sell personal information.
If you are a California resident, the CCPA/CPRA gives you the right to know what personal information is collected about you and to opt out of its sale or sharing. We do not sell personal information ourselves; to opt out of personalised advertising specifically, use the links above.
If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or another jurisdiction with comparable law, you have rights of access, correction, deletion and restriction under the GDPR or its local equivalent. Because we hold no accounts and store no puzzles, we usually have nothing on file to return or delete — but for any request or question, write to p@pwhite.org.
This site is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Teachers and parents use it to make puzzles for children; the puzzles themselves are made by the adult, and nothing about the solver is collected beyond the analytics and advertising described above.
The site is served over HTTPS. No website can promise absolute security, but we take reasonable measures. If this policy changes materially, the “last updated” date above will change.
Privacy questions: p@pwhite.org