World of Riddles is a place to write and share riddles with strangers. Everything you play here was written by another player, and none of it is reviewed before it appears. This policy covers what you may post, what you may not, and what happens either way. The Code of Conduct is separate: it is advice on making the game good, while this is the part you agree to by posting.
1. What you post stays yours, and what you let us do with it
You keep ownership of everything you write or upload (the “Content”). By submitting Content to World of Riddles you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable and transferable licence to use, host, store, cache, reproduce, publish, display, perform, distribute, transmit, modify, adapt (including in order to fit the networks, devices and services the app runs on) and create derivative works of it, for the purpose of running and promoting the app.
You may only post Content you have the right to post. A riddle you copied from somewhere else, a photograph you found online, or anything carrying someone else’s copyright or trademark is not yours to license to us.
The licence lasts as long as the Content is on the service. Deleting a riddle or a location deletes it, and deletes the images uploaded with it; copies may survive for a short time in caches and backups, and anything another player already saw or saved is beyond anyone’s reach.
2. What this place is
This is an open platform for riddles, and riddles are written by people. What you find here may be funny, serious, clever, clumsy, offensive, or anywhere in between. While you are here, keep one thing above all others in mind: show enough respect to the people around you that we can all go on enjoying the game for what it is.
Within that, there is a lot of room. The sections below are the edges of it. They are written in the spirit of “don’t be the reason we need more rules”, and looking for loopholes in them is a waste of your time and ours.
3. Content that is not allowed
Content is prohibited if it:
- Is illegal, or encourages or helps anybody to do something illegal.
- Sexualises a minor in any way, or depicts one sexually. There is no version of this that is a joke, and no tag that makes it acceptable.
- Is pornography, or is sexual imagery of a person who did not consent to it being shared.
- Encourages or incites violence, or celebrates it against a real person or group.
- Threatens, harasses or bullies somebody, or encourages others to do so.
- Contains personal or confidential information about another person — see section 4.
- Impersonates somebody in a misleading or deceptive manner, including passing another player’s riddles off as your own.
- Infringes somebody else’s copyright, trademark or other rights.
- Is spam: advertising, link-farming, or the same content posted over and over.
4. Other people are not material
Do not post another person’s photograph, face, name, voice, address, phone number, workplace, account handles or anything else that identifies them, unless they have agreed to it. This holds whether they are a friend, a stranger, an ex or a public figure, and it holds for a riddle’s pictures exactly as much as for its text. “They wouldn’t mind” is not consent, and neither is a face being small in the frame.
A riddle is public the moment you post it, and an uploaded image stays reachable at its own web address for as long as the riddle exists. Think twice before putting yourself into one, too.
If something here identifies you and you did not agree to it, report it, and contact us at the address in section 8.
5. NSFW content and the NSFW tag
Adult content is allowed here, and it must be labelled. If your riddle contains nudity, sexual references, profanity or anything else a reasonable person might not want to be seen reading in a public or formal setting such as a workplace, tag it NSFW. The tag covers the whole riddle — its title, description, question, solution, hints, every part of a multi-part riddle, and every image on it — so if any one of those needs the tag, the riddle carries it.
The tag is a label, not a lock. Nothing hides an NSFW riddle from anybody: any player can filter for it or against it, and that filter is the only protection the tag offers. That is exactly why an untagged one is a problem, and it is fair grounds for a report.
Tagging is not permission. Everything in section 3 stays prohibited with the tag on, and nothing in this section makes pornography acceptable here. Keep it civilized: adult does not mean cruel, and the riddle should still be worth somebody’s time.
6. Behaviour that is not allowed
As well as not posting the content above, do not:
- Ask for ratings or votes, or arrange them with anybody — on your riddles, your reputation, the leaderboards, or a report somebody has filed.
- Rate or report to settle a score with a creator rather than to judge what they posted.
- Break the app, or do anything that interferes with other people’s normal use of it.
- Create additional accounts to get around a restriction, a pause, or a suspension.
- Attach a bespoke riddle to a place people cannot safely or lawfully stand.
7. How this is enforced
Mostly by the players. Every riddle and location carries a flag; reporting one opens it for community review, and other players vote to keep it or remove it. Reach the removal threshold and the riddle is removed or the location deleted, and that counts against the creator. Reports are limited and a rejected report pauses your reporting for a while, so the system is not a weapon.
Losing a review costs the creator more than the item: it adds a strike, and strikes pause your ability to add new riddles and locations for a few days — longer each time, fading if it stops happening. The Code of Conduct and the FAQ describe both in detail.
We can also act directly, and the ladder runs roughly: asking you nicely to knock it off; asking you rather less nicely; removing the content; restricting or removing what your account can do; and suspending it temporarily or permanently. Which rung we start on depends on what you posted. For section 3’s first three bullets, we start at the top.
8. Changes and contact
If this policy changes, the updated version appears on this page and on the corresponding screen in the app with a new effective date, and continuing to use the app means you accept it.
To report something urgently, to tell us about content that identifies you, or to ask anything about this policy, contact us at:
world_of_riddles@efstathopoulos.world