Privacy
What the paper knows about you
The paper keeps a circulation book: how many readers came, which columns they opened, and whether they came back. That is the whole of its interest in you. There are no advertisements here and nothing about your reading is sold, shared, or sent anywhere else.
No account, no name
You are never asked for a name, an address, or anything else about yourself, and there is nothing to sign up for. The paper has no way to learn who you are.
Two anonymous marks
Your browser is given two small marks of its own: one so the paper can keep your record and streaks, and one so it can tell a returning reader from a new one. Both are strings of random characters generated on this server. They describe nothing about you, they are never derived from your device, and they are readable by nobody but this site. Clear them and the paper simply greets you as a stranger — everything still works.
Nothing personal is written down
Your network address is used for two things as the request arrives — resolving a country for the circulation map, and forming a scrambled daily tally mark — and is then discarded. It is never written to storage. Nor is the line your browser uses to identify itself, nor the full address of the page that sent you here: of a link from elsewhere the paper keeps only the other site's name — that a reader arrived from a search engine, never what they searched for.
Counted here, by us, and nowhere else
The counting is done by this site alone. There is no Google Analytics, no advertising pixel, no third-party script of any kind, and none of it leaves this server. That is also why you are not made to dismiss a cookie notice before reading: there is no third party to consent to.
Kept briefly, then summed
Individual records — a page opened, a guess made, and which day a mark was seen — are deleted after 90 days. What outlives them are plain totals: how many readers a day, how many finished a puzzle. Totals about nobody in particular.
Crawlers are not readers
Search engines and AI assistants are welcome to read the paper, and are not counted as circulation.
Questions about any of this belong on the colophon.