What the game stores
A room contains chosen player names, lobby and game settings, questions, submitted answers, scores, and a short round history. Lobbies also store ready choices, mode and replay votes, activity timestamps, and recent removal reasons. Pick the Punchline stores private answer hands, discarded cards, custom wild-card submissions, judge decisions, and private answer-card history for fresh rematches. This data runs the game, handles reconnects, and shows results. We don’t ask for an email address, account, contacts, camera, or location.
Each browser gets a random player credential. The server stores a hash of it to recognize your seat, make joining safe to retry, and enforce room-scoped removals. Other players don’t receive your credential. Hosts can remove players from their own rooms; a removal applies to that saved credential, not a verified identity.
Public and private lobbies
Public lobbies appear in the directory with their name, game settings, room code, phase, capacity, and player counts. The directory doesn’t show player names, credentials, custom question text, questions, or answers. Anyone browsing can join an available public room. Choose a nickname and prompts you’re comfortable sharing with new people.
Private lobbies stay out of the directory. Anyone you give their link or code can request a seat, subject to capacity, the game phase, and any age rule. Private means invitation-based access; the game doesn’t verify who a visitor is. A resolved invite shows basic room settings before joining, so treat the link and code as an invitation.
How long it lasts
Rooms stop being accessible 24 hours after creation. Expired records are cleaned during later game requests. Closing a room removes its active game data sooner; room-scoped admission and removal records also expire with the room. Hosting providers may keep operational logs or backups under their own retention practices.
What stays on your phone
This site uses browser local storage to remember your player seats, pending join credentials, and recent question IDs. That lets you reconnect, retry a join without taking a second seat, and helps new games avoid repeats. A temporary setup draft from a previous game flow can carry a name and chosen questions into the lobby host form using session storage; the form consumes it or ignores it after thirty minutes.
A recent-table shortcut saves the room ID and the time you last visited. Home and the lobby browser check that saved seat before offering a return link. Hiding the shortcut removes the reminder; it does not leave the room or clear the seat credential.
Table Shuffle also saves the current card, chosen category, cards played, and recent card IDs. Pitch Battle saves side names, assignments, time remaining, round results, and recent assignment IDs. Solo Arcade saves personal bests and recent word and symbol-pair IDs. Saved browser data remains until you clear it or the browser removes it. Clearing a saved credential can prevent you from recovering its room seat.
Table Shuffle and the solo games run in your browser without creating a multiplayer room. Spoken Table Shuffle answers and Pitch Battle performances aren't recorded or sent to the server. Solo answers and results aren't sent to the game server, and there is no public leaderboard.
The one-phone adults-only games also run in your browser. They save recent card IDs to help avoid repeats; they don't record spoken answers or save the active session. Reloading returns to setup and asks you to confirm the selected pack again.
Adult pack confirmation
Adult packs ask you to confirm a minimum age of 18 or 21 and that you are comfortable with the theme. We don't ask for a date of birth, identity document, or photo. In multiplayer, the confirmation is sent with creation or joining to check the pack's admission rule. The game database stores the room's selected packs, not your date of birth or a separate personal age profile. Combining packs uses the highest selected age requirement; every selected theme is shown before joining. This is a self-confirmation, not an identity verification service.
Who can see your answers
Joined players can see each other’s chosen names and readiness. In matching, guessing, and voting, they see other submitted answers only after everyone answers or passes, or the timer ends. In Pick the Punchline, each phone receives only its own hand. Submitted text becomes visible anonymously during judging, then its author becomes visible after the judge confirms or the round is skipped. Other players never receive your unplayed hand or private answer-card history. Results include the finished round history. Public and private rooms use the same answer privacy before reveal. The host can see their own authored question setup; guests receive each question when it is played.
The public directory, Home, and help pages don’t publish room answers. A room code alone doesn’t read private game state: a joined player credential is needed. Other people in your room can still copy or screenshot anything revealed to them.
Inactivity checks
The game sends occasional activity signals when you interact with a visible game page, plus ordinary state requests to keep it updated. It stores the time of activity and contact, not a history of your taps, typed drafts, or the other apps you use. Polling alone doesn’t mark you active. An unanswered inactivity prompt removes the saved seat after its displayed grace period.
Sharing is your choice
Multiplayer invite links include a room ID or code so people can join. Lobby results shares contain your score or team score, aggregate round counts, and earned table awards. They leave out player names, questions, answers, lobby names, and room invitations. You can share the recap, copy its text, or save its image; image generation happens in your browser.
Original-game shareable results cards contain the team score and playful awards, with player names included only if you turn that option on. Those generated cards also leave out questions and answers. Solo and one-phone game shares contain a result or card count and a public game link. Adult-pack shares identify the full selected mix and its highest age label. Pitch Battle shares contain only a public challenge link and an invitation; they omit side names and spoken pitches. Your phone’s share sheet and whichever app you choose handle delivery.
No external AI reads your answers
Similar wording is checked with built-in text matching. Answers aren’t sent to a language model or an outside matching service. Private-room hosts can count matching intentions the automatic checker misses after talking it through with the table.
Advertising and basic protection
This version loads no advertising network, third-party analytics, or tracking pixels. A configured direct sponsor would appear as one labeled text card on eligible original-game results; visiting its link opens that sponsor’s website, where its policies apply. Sponsor placements are absent from the new lobby flow and disabled on adult-pack games and the one-phone adults-only page.
To limit automated abuse, the server may temporarily keep a hashed network identifier and request counts for room creation, joining, and code lookup. The rate-limit records contain no raw IP address or game answers. The hosting platform receives ordinary network information needed to serve the site.
If an advertising network or analytics service is added later, this page and any required consent controls need to be updated before those services run.
Keep personal details out of prompts
Use a nickname if you prefer. Custom questions and answers are visible to the other people in your room after reveal, so avoid putting contact details or anything you don't want your table to know into the game. The host can close the room when you're done.