Terms of Use

Effective 15 August 2026 · Version 1.0
Bernhard Consulting and Holdings, Ltd. · Quebec, Canada

1. Who you're dealing with

Pwixel (the “Service”) is operated by Bernhard Consulting and Holdings, Ltd. (“we”, “us”, “our”), a company established in the Province of Quebec, Canada. You can reach us at host@pwixel.com.

2. Agreeing to these terms

By using the Service you agree to these Terms of Use. If you don't agree, please don't use it. If you're using Pwixel on behalf of an organisation, you're confirming you have the authority to accept these terms for it.

3. Who may play

Pwixel is open to everyone, but some parts need a little age. You may create an account (by linking an email address or phone number) only if you are 14 years of age or older. If you are under 14, you're welcome to play anonymously, but a parent or guardian must consent before you link any contact details or send a tip.

4. Your profile and your account

Pwixel gives your device an anonymous player identifier the first time you open it. That identifier — not an account — is what carries your streak, your scores and your achievements.

Linking an email address or phone number is optional. Its only purpose is to let you claim that anonymous profile and restore it on another device. We send a short numeric code to confirm the address is yours. Anyone who can read that code can claim the profile, so keep your inbox and your device to yourself. You may unlink a contact or sign out on a device at any time from the account screen.

5. Player names

Names are first-come and unique. Choosing one doesn't make it your property. We may reclaim, change or refuse a name that impersonates someone, infringes a trademark, is used to harass, or is offensive — and we filter obvious cases automatically. Your name is visible to other players on leaderboards, in the Arena and on shared result cards.

6. Fair play

Pwixel is one board a day and one attempt at it, so fairness is most of the point. You agree not to:

• use scripts, solvers, bots or any automated means to play, submit scores, or interact with our API;
• tamper with the game client, forge submissions, or exploit a bug instead of reporting it;
• use more than one profile to inflate a score, a streak or a referral;
• harass, threaten or abuse other players, including through names or shared content;
• attempt to disrupt, overload, probe or reverse-engineer the Service, or access parts of it you haven't been given access to;
• scrape, copy or redistribute the word list, board data or other players' results.

Every score is re-played and re-scored on our servers from your move log; our result is the official one. We may correct, void or remove a score, a streak or an entire profile where we believe in good faith that this section has been broken.

7. Automated players in the Arena

The Arena may include automated players (“bots”) operated by us, to keep a quiet board company and to test the game under load. Bots play by exactly the same rules as you — same shared bag of letters, same cooldown, same scoring. When the relevant setting is enabled they are marked with 🤖 beside their name. We tell you this because you're entitled to know who you're playing against; we don't present bots as human beings, and we don't use them to sell you anything.

8. What you contribute

What you create in Pwixel is modest — words placed on a board, a display name, and the shape of your finished game. You keep whatever rights you have in it. You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, display, reproduce and distribute it as part of operating and promoting the Service, including on leaderboards and shareable result cards.

The Arena is a single board shared by everyone for a week. Once a word is played it becomes part of that shared board and cannot be withdrawn — it may be built on, scored against, or destroyed by other players. Arena boards are reset each week.

9. Tips and the research pledge

Pwixel is free. If you choose to send a tip, it is a voluntary gift in support of the work — not a purchase, not a subscription to features, and not a charitable donation for tax purposes. No tip buys any advantage, content or privilege in the game. Supporters may be shown a small ◆ badge; that is the whole of it.

Payments are handled by Stripe; we never see or store your card details. Recurring tips can be cancelled at any time and stop at the end of the current period. Because a tip is a gift rather than a sale, it is generally not refundable — but if you tipped by mistake, write to us and we will do the decent thing.

We publicly pledge to direct a share of net tips (shown in the app, currently 25%) to Lynch syndrome research. This is a promise we make and account for ourselves. It is not a charitable receipt, and no tax deduction arises from it.

10. The Service will change

Pwixel is under active development. Rules, scoring, features and difficulty change — sometimes daily. We may add, alter, suspend or remove any part of it, reset boards or leaderboards, and take the Service down for maintenance, without notice. We don't promise uninterrupted or error-free service, and we don't promise that scores, streaks or progress will survive every change, though we try hard to make them.

11. Ownership

The Service — its software, engine, game design, rules, artwork, wordmark, name and the compiled word list — is owned by Bernhard Consulting and Holdings, Ltd. and is protected by copyright and other intellectual-property laws. © 2026 Bernhard Consulting and Holdings, Ltd. All rights reserved.

You get a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the Service for your own enjoyment. You may share your own results freely, including the result cards the game generates. Everything else — copying, modifying, distributing, creating derivative works, or using any part of Pwixel commercially — needs our written permission.

Attributions. Pwixel's dictionary is compiled programmatically from the public-domain ENABLE word list, filtered against publicly available English word-frequency corpora (OpenSubtitles and Wikipedia) and an open offensive-terms blocklist. Those sources belong to their respective authors and are used under their own terms; our compilation, curation and the resulting word list are ours.

12. Other people's services

Pwixel relies on third parties to work: BeanHive for hosting, Stripe for payments, Resend and Twilio for email and verification codes, and mapping tiles in our own administrative tools. Their handling of your information is governed by their own terms and policies, and we aren't responsible for services we don't operate.

13. Disclaimers and liability

Except where the law says otherwise, the Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranty of any kind, and we do not guarantee that it will be uninterrupted, secure, or free of errors.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising from your use of the Service, and our total liability for any claim is limited to the greater of the amount you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or CAD $100.

These limits stop where the law stops them. Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law — including our liability for bodily or moral injury, for gross or intentional fault, and the protections the Quebec Consumer Protection Act gives you as a consumer. Where that Act applies, its rules prevail over anything in this section that conflicts with them, and nothing here is intended to release us from the consequences of our own acts.

14. Suspension and ending your use

You may stop using Pwixel at any time, and ask us to delete your profile by writing to host@pwixel.com. We may suspend or end access for anyone who breaks these terms, or where we must in order to protect the Service or its players. Sections 8, 11, 13, 15 and 19 survive the end of this agreement.

15. Governing law and where disputes are heard

These terms are governed by the laws in force in the Province of Quebec and the federal laws of Canada that apply there, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

Any dispute will be brought before the courts of the judicial district of Montréal, Province of Quebec, and you and we agree to their jurisdiction. Nothing here takes away a consumer's right to bring proceedings before the courts of the place where they are domiciled, where the law gives them that right. We haven't asked you to give up the right to go to court, and we haven't required arbitration.

Before anything formal, please write to us. Most things are a misunderstanding and a short email fixes them.

16. Language

This document is published in English. A French version is available on request from host@pwixel.com and will be provided free of charge. It is the express wish of the parties that these terms and all related documents be drawn up in the language requested.

Le présent document est publié en anglais. Une version française est disponible gratuitement sur demande à host@pwixel.com. Les parties conviennent expressément que les présentes conditions et tous les documents s'y rattachant soient rédigés dans la langue demandée.

17. Your information

To run Pwixel we hold:

• an anonymous device identifier, created on first use, which carries your progress;
• any email address or phone number you choose to link, used only to verify it's you and to restore your profile on another device;
• your display name, which is public;
• your gameplay — scores, move logs, streaks, achievements — which we re-play on our servers to keep the leaderboard honest;
• coarse location derived from your IP address (country and city) and basic usage events, for statistics about how the game is being played.

We don't sell your information and we don't use it for advertising. We keep it as long as your profile exists. You may ask us at any time to see, correct, or delete what we hold, or to have it sent to you in a portable form, by writing to host@pwixel.com; we'll answer within 30 days. A separate, fuller Privacy Policy is being prepared and will be published here.

18. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as Pwixel changes. When we do, we'll update the effective date at the top and, for anything that materially affects you, tell you in the app. Continuing to play after a change means you accept the new version. If you don't, stop using the Service and ask us to delete your profile.

19. Everything else

If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands. Our not enforcing something isn't a waiver of it. You can't transfer your rights under these terms; we may transfer ours as part of a reorganisation or sale of the business, on notice to you.