Archive standards
Sources, copyright and external solutions
Crafty Puzzles aims to preserve useful puzzle information without treating attribution as permission to copy somebody else’s creative work.
What we normally use
We can record factual information such as a puzzle’s name, maker, dimensions, piece count, objective and broad mechanism, then write our own description. We can also link directly to a public manufacturer, creator, retailer or archived source page.
What we do not copy merely because we cite it
Attribution does not by itself grant a licence to republish photographs, diagrams, videos, scans, manuals or substantial passages of text. Unless reuse is licensed, permitted by the rights holder or clearly within an applicable copyright exception, Crafty Puzzles instead uses original illustrations and summaries and links to the source.
External solutions
If another website publishes the solution, Crafty Puzzles can provide a clearly labelled external link. Where embedding is enabled by the source platform, an official or authorised video may be embedded rather than downloaded and re-uploaded.
Researching and adapting solution information
Crafty Puzzles may consult manufacturer solution libraries, retailer catalogues, collector reviews, Pinterest pins and Internet Archive captures to identify a puzzle or understand its mechanism. Factual findings such as piece count, dimensions, objective, movement order and alternative names can be cross-checked against the surviving archive.
Where an external diagram or instruction sheet is protected, it is not copied merely because it can be viewed online. The preferred approach is to link to the source and create original Crafty Puzzles wording, diagrams or labelled 3D reconstructions from verified geometry. If the geometry cannot be verified, the page remains provisional.
Wayback Machine material
Archived webpages remain subject to the original rights in their text, images and documents. The Internet Archive is useful evidence for identification and history, but an archived copy is not automatically public-domain material.
How this policy is applied across the puzzle archive
Every puzzle solution or reference page has a rights-handling status. New research pages use original Crafty Puzzles text and artwork, externally hosted material remains with its source, and third-party manuals or archived documents are linked rather than copied.
- Legacy Crafty Puzzles archive material
- Crafty Puzzles original or recreated material
- Externally hosted video
- Third-party source — link only
- Archived third-party source — link only
- Crafty Puzzles reference material
- Identification only — no recovered solution
Legacy archive review
Some puzzle pages contain material inherited from the historic Crafty Puzzles site. These are labelled as legacy archive material rather than automatically claimed as newly owned content. If authorship or a continuing licence can be confirmed for particular assets, the page can be updated accordingly.
Privacy and photo recognition
The Crafty Puzzles photo identifier processes the selected photograph in the visitor’s browser. The quick matcher uses only local visual fingerprints. Enhanced recognition loads an optional browser-based vision model only after the visitor chooses to use it; the selected photograph is not uploaded to Crafty Puzzles or an image-recognition API.
The optional recognition software and model are downloaded from Hugging Face and jsDelivr, so those file hosts receive normal web-request information such as IP address and browser details. They are not sent the selected puzzle photograph by the Crafty Puzzles identifier.
Corrections and rights requests
If you own rights in material referenced by this archive and believe a link, quotation or illustration needs correction, use the contact page.
This page explains the site’s conservative editorial approach and is not legal advice.