crosscue

Delete your Crosscue data

App: Crosscue (crossword solver for iOS and Android) Developer: Tom Hess (AtomicTrxn) Effective date: June 15, 2026

This page explains how to delete the data Crosscue stores, what is deleted, what is kept, and how long anything is retained. For the full picture of what Crosscue does and does not collect, see the Privacy Policy.

Crosscue is offline-first and account-free: most of your data never leaves your device. There is no account to delete. Depending on which optional features you turned on, your data can live in up to three places, and you control all three.

1. Delete everything on your device (one step)

In the app:

Settings → Privacy & Data → Clear all data

This single action removes everything Crosscue stored on the device:

• imported and downloaded puzzles
• solve progress, completion history, and statistics
• app settings (theme, sound, haptics, accessibility preferences)
• the optional local crash log (if you ever enabled crash reporting)

If you also used Challenge Boards, the same action deletes your server-side data too — see step 2, which it performs automatically.

You can also remove on-device data without the app: uninstall Crosscue, or use your device’s system settings (iOS: delete the app; Android: Settings → Apps → Crosscue → Storage → Clear storage).

2. Delete your Challenge Boards data (done automatically by step 1)

Challenge Boards is an optional, invite-only feature. It is the only part of Crosscue that stores anything on a Crosscue-operated server (hosted on Cloudflare). If you ever created or joined a board, that server holds:

• an anonymous player identity (a random id and access token — not tied to your name, email, or any account)
• your chosen display name
• which boards you belong to (and board names you created)
• solve-result metadata for eligible daily puzzles (puzzle source and date, your elapsed time, completion type, and timestamps)
• compact lifetime aggregate stats for each board

Settings → Privacy & Data → Clear all data (step 1) also sends a deletion request to the server, which:

• removes you from every board (a board with no remaining members is deleted),
• deletes your challenge solve-result rows,
• anonymizes any residual membership records,
• and revokes your access token and recovery secret.

If the server can’t be reached at that moment, the app tells you and lets you retry, so the request isn’t silently lost.

Crosscue never stores your puzzle answers, guesses, or clue text on the server.

3. Remove the copy in your own cloud (only if you turned on sync)

If you turned on sync, your puzzles, progress, and settings are stored in your own private cloud account — iCloud on iOS, the hidden Google Drive app-data folder on Android. This is your data in your account; Crosscue never receives or stores it.

To delete that copy:

Settings → Sync → Turn off and remove cloud copy

This deletes Crosscue’s data from your iCloud or Google Drive account. (Turning sync off without choosing “remove cloud copy” leaves the cloud copy in place.)

What is kept, and for how long

• On your device / in your cloud: nothing is kept after the steps above — the data is removed where you ran them.
• On the Crosscue server: after a deletion request, your player record is soft-deleted and your results are removed. Internal board-activity audit records are short-lived regardless — they are purged automatically on a rolling ~14-day window.
• Provider backups: as with most online services, copies may persist briefly in the hosting provider’s routine backups before they age out. Crosscue does not use these for any purpose; they expire on the provider’s schedule.

Request deletion without the app

The in-app steps above are the fastest path and require no account. If you can’t use the app — for example, you’ve uninstalled it but want to confirm your Challenge Boards data is gone — email atomhess@gmail.com with the subject Delete my data. Because the identity is anonymous, please send the request from a device that can still open the app (so it can supply your anonymous player id), or include any board invite link you still have; we’ll help locate and remove the associated server record.

Contact

For any question about deleting Crosscue data, contact:

atomhess@gmail.com