Terms of use

Who you are dealing with

These terms are an agreement between you and APIDLY LTD (trading as Wordtide), a private limited company registered in England and Wales (company no. 17042735), registered office 82a James Carter Road, Mildenhall, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, IP28 7DE, United Kingdom (“we”, “us”). Company details are on our company information page. You can reach us through wordtide.app/contact.

The game

Wordtide is free to play and provided “as is”. To the extent the law allows, we give no warranties beyond those the law gives you. It may change, go down, or lose data at any time. Items you paid for are different: see “Purchases” below, and your consumer rights always apply to them.

Be kind

Keep names and words friendly. Offensive display names and words are blocked or filtered, and kids play here too. Names can’t carry phone numbers, links or other apps’ handles, and Wordtide has no chat or private messages: please never use a name or the board to ask another player to contact you somewhere else. We may remove or change any name, word or tile, and may block players who repeatedly try to get around the filters.

If a display name is rude, mean, shares personal information or pretends to be someone, use Report name. When enough different players report a name, it is replaced by an animal name for everyone until we review it; we may then rename the players who use it and block that name. Please only report names that break these rules: reports are limited per player and false reports may be ignored.

Play fair

• No cheating, bots, scripts or other automation.
• No attacking, overloading or probing our servers.
• No exploiting bugs for points. Please report them instead.

The shared board is public

Everything you place on the board, and your display name, is visible to everyone. By playing you let us display it in the game and on leaderboards. Don’t include personal information.

Kids and grown-ups

Little Tide (ages 3 and up) and Easy mode are made for children. Settings, saving a player and leaving Little Tide sit behind a grown-up check. A parent or guardian is responsible for a young child’s use of Wordtide and can ask us to delete the child’s player data at any time.

Ads and partner platforms

Grown-up play on our own site shows ads, and you can choose to watch an optional ad for a reward such as an extra lantern. Little Tide and kid profiles never show ads. When you play Wordtide on a partner portal or app store, that platform’s own terms, ad rules and privacy policy also apply, and where they conflict for that platform, the platform’s rules about its service win. Rewards are for fun only: they have no cash value and cannot be sold or transferred.

Purchases

Wordtide is free to play. On some platforms (Yandex Games, and Telegram with Telegram Stars) grown-ups can buy optional digital items: Supporter (no ads between games; ads you choose to watch for a reward stay available), tile skins (a look only) and lantern packs (word hints that do not expire for as long as you keep your player, and work like the free daily ones). Purchases never change how a word scores and never earn league or Tide Pass points, and the Tide Pass stays free. A word laid by a hint, from a free or a bought lantern, never counts for leagues, the Tide Pass or the leaderboards. “For good” and “never expire” mean for as long as you keep the player the items are on (see below). Purchases are never offered in Little Tide, to kid profiles or in Easy mode.

• The seller is APIDLY LTD (details at the top of these terms). You pay the platform, in its currency (Telegram Stars, or the currency Yandex Games shows) and under its payment terms. The price on the Buy button and on the platform’s payment sheet is the whole price; we add no other charges.
• Every price is a one-off payment. Nothing in Wordtide is a subscription and nothing renews or charges you again. Supporter is paid once and lasts for as long as Wordtide runs on that platform.
• The item is delivered to the Wordtide player linked to your account on that platform, and Supporter and skins are restored there if you play on another device.
• Digital content, supplied at once. Before you pay, the Shop asks you to tick a box to confirm that you want the item delivered straight away and that you understand you then lose your 14-day right to cancel. You cannot buy without ticking it. With that consent, under regulation 37 of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, the right to cancel ends once the item is delivered. If you live in the EU or EEA, the same applies under Article 16(m) of the Consumer Rights Directive (2011/83/EU) as it applies in your country.
• Confirmation. On Telegram our bot sends you a receipt in the chat straight after payment: the item, the price, the payment ID, your consent above and the seller’s details. On Yandex Games, Yandex keeps the record of your purchase.
• Refunds follow the platform’s rules. Yandex Games purchases go through Yandex’s refund process. For Telegram Stars, write /paysupport to our bot or use wordtide.app/contact within 14 days; we refund Stars for an item that did not arrive or was bought by mistake. A refunded item is removed from your player. Your rights for faulty digital content under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 are not affected.
• Items have no cash value, cannot be sold or transferred, and may change as the game changes; if we stop offering an item you bought, we will tell you in the game and you keep its use for as long as the game runs on that platform. A world reset never removes what you paid for.
• If your player is deleted (you chose “Delete my player”, or nobody played it for 13 months), the items on it are deleted with it. On Yandex Games, Restore purchases brings Supporter and skins back to a new player on the same Yandex account. For Telegram Stars, write to us through wordtide.app/contact and we will put Supporter or a skin back on the player linked to the same Telegram account. Lanterns already bought cannot be restored after deletion.

Word lists and credits

The dictionaries and filters in Wordtide come from public-domain and openly licensed lists. See the licences page for credits. Wordtide is an independent game and is not affiliated with any other word game or its owners.

Resets

We may reset or edit the world, scores or leaderboards at any time, for example to fix problems or start a new season. Progress is not guaranteed to last. A reset never removes items you paid for.

Reporting illegal or harmful content

If you see a display name, a word on the board or a crew, duel or invite link that you think is illegal, harmful to children or breaks these terms, use Report name in the game (next to the name), Report word on the word card, or write to us through wordtide.app/contact with the topic “Report a name, word or link” and say where it is and why. You don’t need an account to report. We look at every report carefully and without bias, and act quickly where something is illegal. If we remove or change your name or a word you placed, you can ask us why and ask us to look again through the same form. This form is also our single point of contact for players and for authorities under the EU Digital Services Act; please write in English.

Online safety (UK Online Safety Act 2023)

Wordtide lets players see things other players made: display names, the words they place on the shared board, and crew, duel and invite links. There is no chat, no private messaging, no photos, videos or uploads, and no free text other than display names. This section explains how we protect people in the United Kingdom, and everyone else, from illegal content and children from content that is harmful to them.

• Terrorism content: display names with the names of proscribed terrorist groups and hate figures are blocked when they are chosen. Any other name or word that promotes terrorism is removed as soon as we confirm it, and players acting for a proscribed organisation are removed from the game.
• Child sexual exploitation and abuse: there is no way to send messages, images or links to another player. Sexual words are removed from the dictionaries so they cannot be played, and children’s profiles (ages 3–12, Little Tide and Easy mode) use only preset animal names and see every other player under a preset name. Names cannot carry phone numbers or other apps’ handles. Anything that suggests a child is at risk is reviewed first and, where appropriate, reported to the police or the National Crime Agency.
• Other illegal content (for example hate, threats and harassment, fraud): slurs and sexual terms are removed from the dictionaries, so they can’t be played; display names are checked for slurs, obscenities, threats such as “kys” and hate figures; and a name can’t be a link, a phone number or an account number. Reported names are hidden for everyone once several players report them, until we review them.
• Taking content down: when we are told about, or find, a name, word or link that is illegal, we remove or change it swiftly: we replace the name with an animal name for everyone, remove the tiles, or end the link.
• Automatic tools: we use automated word filters, not people, as a first check. When you choose a display name, it is checked against lists of slurs, obscenities and hate figures (in English, and in the other alphabets the game uses), with tricks like lookalike letters, numbers for letters and spacing undone. Words that may be played but are not suitable to show are masked (for example “S••••E”) wherever they are shown away from the board. The filters run every time a name is set or a word is shown; they don’t read anything else.
• Children: pornographic content and content that encourages suicide, self-harm or eating disorders has no place on Wordtide: nothing but single dictionary words and short names can be posted, sexual terms are removed from the dictionaries, and names are filtered (including “kill yourself” and its short forms). Bullying, abuse and hateful, violent or dangerous content is filtered the same way for everyone, and children of every age band see only preset names, so they never see another player’s typed name. Teens (13–17) see typed names, which go through the same filters and reports.

Complaints

You can complain to us, through wordtide.app/contact with the topic “Complaint or appeal about a decision”, about: content you think is illegal or harmful to children (use the reporting topic above); a decision we made about your name or a word you placed, including asking us to reverse it; the way our filters treated you; or anything else about how we meet our online safety duties. Anyone can complain, whether or not they play.

• We read every complaint. Reports of illegal content are reviewed first, and we aim to review them within two working days. Appeals are decided promptly, normally within 14 days.
• If an appeal succeeds, we restore your name or words and stop treating the name as blocked. If you leave a reply address, we tell you what we decided and why.
• We may set aside complaints that are clearly unfounded, for example the same complaint sent many times, or abuse of the form. Each sender may send a few messages a day.
• This doesn’t affect your other rights, including your consumer rights and your right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office about your data.

Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, APIDLY LTD is not liable for any loss or damage arising from your use of Wordtide, including lost progress or downtime. Nothing in these terms limits or excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for digital content you paid for that is faulty, not as described or not fit for purpose, or any other liability that cannot be limited or excluded by law.

Your rights as a consumer

If you are a consumer, nothing in these terms affects your statutory rights. In the United Kingdom that includes your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 for digital content. If you live in the European Union or the European Economic Area, you also keep the protection of the mandatory consumer laws of the country where you live, and nothing here takes that away. If a paid item does not work as described, tell us and we will fix it, replace it or refund you, as the law requires.

Governing law and courts

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. If you are a consumer living in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you may also bring proceedings in your local courts. If you are a consumer living in the European Union or the European Economic Area, you may bring proceedings in the courts of the country where you live, and the choice of English law does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory rules of that country. We are not obliged to, and do not, take part in alternative dispute resolution, but please tell us first about any problem through wordtide.app/contact.

Privacy and contact

See our privacy policy for how data is handled. For questions, removal requests or anything else, use the contact form at wordtide.app/contact.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms, for example when the game or the law changes, and we will change the date at the top of this page. A change never takes away a purchase you already made or your statutory rights.