Version 2026-11-03. These rules describe how Defty actually works, subscription and all. One item is still to be filled in and is marked where it falls.
Defty is made and run by Elie Abijaoude, of Elias Baaklini Street, Achrafieh, Beirut, Lebanon ("Defty", "we"). Defty is one person rather than a company, and the person is named here because somebody has to be answerable for it. You can reach us at defty.app@gmail.com, which is where support, privacy requests and appeals all go, and which is read by the same person who wrote the app.
Defty is a daily puzzle app. It sets two short rounds of puzzles a day: a four-game round that needs no reading and is not played in any language, and a three-game round of English words. Every player in the world is given the identical boards.
Both rounds are free, every day, to everybody. What is sold is a subscription, Defty Plus, and three single purchases. None of them changes a puzzle, a clock, a scoring window or a score. What they buy is somewhere for a score to count: the leaderboards, a division of ten players a week, duels, the Sunday Special, and the three days behind today.
There are no prizes. Nothing in Defty can be won, there is no entry fee, nothing is wagered, and no money is paid out. Your score is a score.
Apple is not a sponsor of Defty and is not involved in it in any manner. Any questions, complaints or claims about Defty come to us and not to Apple.
Everything bought in Defty is bought from Apple, through the App Store. Apple takes the payment and holds the card; what reaches us is a signed receipt saying what was bought and until when. We never see your card.
You can play one round of each set of games a day, free, whether or not you subscribe. The two are counted apart, so playing one does not use up the other. Every player who plays on the same day is given the identical puzzles, and they change each day at midnight UTC. Each game is explained before it starts, and the round begins when you choose.
You can leave a round and come back to it. Close the app, take a call, lose the network: the round waits where you left it with its clock stopped, and opening Defty again puts you back on the same board at the same time. Nothing you have played is lost by leaving.
What ends a round is the day, not the leaving. At the end of the day a round you never came back to is scored on what you had done: the board you were on is scored as though its clock had run out, and the games you never reached score nothing. Only a round played to its end, or one the day ended under, uses up the day's.
The server keeps the time and decides every result, so results cannot be altered on your device. Your measured network delay is taken off your times. In the daily round every game gives you 120 seconds, counting down. A mistake costs seconds, and those seconds come off the clock in front of you as well as counting against the time you are scored on; if the clock reaches nothing the game ends there, with whatever you had done.
Each game scores from 0 to 1,000, so no game counts for more than another. Every game gives you the same 120 seconds, but each is scored over a window of its own, because they are not the same kind of puzzle: finishing scores from 1,000, at a time only the very fastest reach, down to 200 at the end of that game's window, with the seconds a mistake cost counted into the time. Finishing after the window has closed still scores 200. Running out of time altogether scores from 0 to 200, by how much of the game you had done. So finishing always scores better than not finishing, and what you got done in a game you couldn't finish still counts.
Your round's score is the sum of its games: out of 4,000 in the four-game round and out of 3,000 in the word round. The two are never compared with each other. Scores shown in the app are rounded to whole points. The Sunday Special is played on bigger boards with longer clocks and is scored over wider windows of its own, so that what it measures is the player rather than the size of the board.
A played round may also show where it would have come among the other people who played the same puzzles that day, drawn at random from them. It is not a table and nothing is paid for a place.
Defty Plus is a subscription, sold by the month or by the year. The price, the period and any introductory offer are shown in the app and by the App Store before you buy. Today the United States prices are $3.99 a month and $39.99 a year; every other storefront has its own price in its own currency.
When a subscription ends, every round you played, every score and every leaderboard point you earned stays yours. What goes is the standing. You come out of your division straight away, keeping the points you had earned in that week, and you stop being ranked on either leaderboard. A division falls one step for every thirty days away from the game, and never below Copper, so coming back after a while is a climb rather than a cliff. Subscribe again and your leaderboard total carries on from where it stopped.
A streak is days played in a row. It pays ten points a day on the leaderboard and nothing in the division, and every thirty days earns a shield, up to three, each of which spends itself to cover one day missed.
Three single purchases, each $0.99 in the United States store and priced by the App Store elsewhere: one Sunday Special, for the week it is played; one duel, sent or taken on; and one board from the three days behind today.
Each is spent on the thing it opens and does not come back, so there is nothing to restore on a new device. A duel pass is the one that can return: if the duel it was spent on is turned down, or runs out with nobody taking it on, the pass goes back to the player who bought it. A board pass is spent on the round it opens and stays spent.
Playing Defty, you agree not to:
We record how each round was played and review rounds that look automated or shared. Where we find a breach we may void the round, and suspend or close the account. You may ask us to look again at any decision at defty.app@gmail.com, and a person reads it. Nothing that can be bought changes a puzzle, a clock or a score, so there is nothing here to buy your way past.
You can share your score through the sharing on your device. What is shared is the day, your total, your score in each game and where you came, never the puzzles or their answers.
What we collect and why is in the privacy policy. You can ask us to close your account and delete it at defty.app@gmail.com. Closing an account does not cancel a subscription, which is held by Apple and has to be cancelled there.