Terms of Service · SudoRush

These terms are the agreement between you and SudoRush ("SudoRush", "we", "us") covering your use of https://play.whosin.chat and everything on it. By creating an account or playing, you accept them. If you do not accept them, do not use the service.

1. Who may use the service

You must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter a contract where you live.

You must not use the service if prize contests of this kind are prohibited where you are. It is your responsibility to know that; we block the jurisdictions we are aware of, but we cannot know every local rule.

One person, one account. Accounts are personal and may not be shared, sold, transferred or operated on behalf of someone else.

2. What the service is

SudoRush runs free-to-enter skill contests ("seasons"). Each season has a prize pool that we fund, a limited catalogue of Sudoku puzzles, a recurring competition, and a closing time. Players earn season points by solving puzzles. When the season closes, the pool is distributed between competitors in proportion to the points they earned.

There is no entry fee, no deposit and no wager. You never pay us to play, you cannot lose money by playing, and there is nothing you can buy that improves your position. Outcomes are determined by skill: a puzzle is either solved correctly or it is not. No winner is selected at random.

3. Season points

Season points are a score. They are not currency, have no fixed monetary value, and cannot be bought, sold, transferred between accounts, or redeemed for anything.
They exist for two purposes only: to determine competitive standing, and to determine a competitor's share of the prize pool.
There are exactly two ways to earn them: solving puzzles from the season catalogue, and solving puzzles in the recurring competition.

4. Season puzzles

A season has a fixed catalogue of puzzles, published before it opens. No further puzzles are added to it.
You may start one season puzzle every 60 minutes. The period runs from the moment a puzzle is assigned to you.
Solving a puzzle early, failing it, leaving it, or allowing its reservation to expire does not shorten or reset that period.
A puzzle you are assigned is reserved to you alone, globally, for 60 minutes. No other player may open or view it during that time.
If it is not solved before the reservation expires, the reservation ends and the puzzle returns to the pool for any player. Your own waiting period continues to run from when it was assigned.
A puzzle solved successfully is claimed permanently and cannot be solved again by anyone.
Submissions received after a reservation has ended are rejected and award nothing. The server clock determines this.

5. The competition

A competition event opens every 3 hours on a fixed global schedule aligned to midnight UTC.
Each event contains three puzzles — Easy, Medium and Hard — which are the same for every player and may be played by any number of players simultaneously.
Each puzzle awards its points independently when solved. There is no bonus for completing all three and no requirement to attempt them in order.
You have one competitive attempt at each difficulty per event. Once a difficulty is completed or failed it remains so until the event ends.
Failing one difficulty does not prevent you from playing the others.
Competition puzzles are separate from the season catalogue and do not affect the season puzzle waiting period.

6. Hints and mistakes

Every competitive puzzle provides exactly 2 free hints. They cannot be purchased, earned, extended, replenished, or obtained by viewing an advertisement.
Every competitive puzzle allows at most 3 incorrect entries. The third ends the attempt immediately with no points awarded.
There are no extra lives, no competitive retries, and nothing that can be watched or paid for to obtain either.
Neither limit applies in practice mode, which awards no points and has no effect on any competitive outcome.

7. Teams

You compete either as an individual or as a member of one team of at most 10 players. Team membership is scoped to a single season.
You must choose before you begin earning points in that season. Once you have begun, your competitive identity is locked: you may not leave the team, change team, transfer points, or revert to competing individually for the remainder of that season.
A team is a single competitor. Its members' points are aggregated into one total and it occupies one position in the standings.
Points counted towards a team are never also counted as an individual's points.
A team's payout is calculated for the team and then divided equally between its locked members. The size of an individual's contribution does not affect the division.

8. Prizes

The prize pool for a season is published before it opens and does not change once it is live.
At the close of a season, each competitor receives: their eligible points, divided by the total eligible points of all competitors, multiplied by the prize pool.
Because that denominator depends on how much everyone else scores, any figure shown before settlement is an estimate and is labelled as one.
Puzzles nobody solves are simply not paid out. We retain no part of a prize that has been won.
Points held pending a fair-play review are excluded from a share until the review concludes.

9. Payouts

Payouts are made by PayPal to the destination saved on your account. Getting that detail right is your responsibility; we are not liable for money sent to an address you gave us incorrectly.
You must have a confirmed email address and an active account in good standing.
Balances below $5.00 are not sent, because provider fees would consume them. They remain visible in your account.
Payouts are released after the season settles and any fair-play reviews are resolved. We aim to complete this within 14 days of a season closing.
You are responsible for any tax arising on money you receive from us, and for reporting it where you live.
We may require identity verification before releasing a payout where we are legally obliged to, or where fraud is suspected.

10. Fair play

You must solve puzzles yourself, unaided by software. Specifically, you must not:

use a Sudoku solver, script, bot, macro, or any automation to produce or assist your answers
run more than one account, or coordinate with other accounts to farm puzzles
attempt to read the solution from the service by any means other than solving the puzzle
interfere with the service, other players, or the integrity of a season

We monitor how puzzles are solved and score each solve for signs of automation. Where a solve is suspicious we hold the points and review them. Where automation is established we may void the points, withhold payment, and close the account. Our Fair Play policy explains the process, including how to appeal.

11. Your account

Keep your password to yourself and tell us promptly if you think someone else has access. You are responsible for activity on your account.

Your display name is public on leaderboards. Do not choose one that impersonates someone, promotes anything, or would be offensive to other players; we may change it if you do.

You can delete your account at any time from your account settings. Deleting it forfeits any unpaid points, because we can no longer verify or pay them.

12. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, that we reasonably suspect of automation or fraud, or where we are required to by law. Where the reason is a fair-play matter we will tell you and you may appeal.

We may also end, shorten or cancel a season if a technical fault makes it unfair to continue. If we do, we will publish what happened and pay out points already confirmed at the point of cancellation.

13. Advertising

The service is supported by advertising, including Google AdSense and advertisers we sell to directly. Advertisements are labelled. We are not responsible for the content of third-party sites you reach through them.

14. Intellectual property

The service, its design, its puzzle generator and its content are owned by SudoRush. You may not copy, scrape, resell or systematically extract any part of it, including the puzzles.

15. Availability and liability

We work to keep the service running but do not guarantee it will be uninterrupted or error-free. Seasons run on real infrastructure and outages can happen.

To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability to you for any claim connected to the service is limited to the amount of prize money owed to you at the time the claim arose. We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, including lost time or lost opportunity to solve puzzles.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

16. Changes

We may update these terms. Material changes will be announced on the site before they take effect, and they will never change the terms of a season that is already live.

17. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of England & Wales, and the courts of England & Wales have exclusive jurisdiction, except where mandatory local consumer law gives you the right to bring a claim where you live.

18. Contact

SudoRush — support@whosin.chat