Prize Rules

1. What's at stake

A new Pie opens each Monday 00:00 Sydney time and closes the following Sunday 23:59 Sydney time. Each qualified player receives a uniquely generated puzzle for the week. Submitted scores are ranked, and the cash prize pool — AUD $100 — is split among the top 5 finishers as follows:

Entries close at the moment the week closes. Submissions made after the close (due to network delay or clock skew) are not eligible.

2. Who can play

To play the Weekly Pie and win cash, you must:

• Be 18 years of age or older at the time of entry
• Be a resident of Australia
• Hold a PuzzlePie account in good standing. (Your account uses a username; we'll verify your real legal name at the time you claim a prize.)
• Not be an employee, contractor, officer, director, or immediate family member of PuzzlePie's operator

Free play (daily puzzles, leaderboard) is open to everyone, but cash prizes are limited to the eligibility above.

3. How to qualify

There are two paths to qualify for any given week's Pie. Both are entirely free — there is no purchase necessary and a Premium subscription does not affect qualification.

Path 1 — Top 100 by overall weekly score

Players who finish in the top 100 of the overall PuzzlePie weekly leaderboard (sum of scores across all puzzles in a week) automatically qualify for the following week's Pie.

Path 2 — Top 10 in WideWordWeb (WWW)

WWW is our qualifier tournament. It's open every week to any player who is not already in that week's Pie pool. Players who finish in the top 10 of WWW qualify for the following week's Pie. WWW carries no cash prize of its own — the reward is the Pie seat.

Qualification is computed automatically at the moment each week closes (Sunday 23:59 Sydney time). You'll see your status on the Tournaments page from Monday morning.

4. How winners are picked

Pie scores are ranked by the following criteria, in order:

1. Score — higher is better. Score is a function of puzzle accuracy and speed (the exact formula is part of the puzzle design and may be tuned between seasons).
2. Time to complete — if two players score the same, the faster total time wins.
3. Submission order — if both score and time are tied to the millisecond, the earliest submission wins.

Pie puzzles are uniquely generated per player (seeded by your user ID and the week) — no two players solve the same Pie. The grader and timer run server-side; the client never holds the answer key.

5. Anti-cheat policy

The following are strictly prohibited and will result in forfeit of all prizes (current and historical) and closure of all involved accounts:

• Using bots, scripts, browser extensions, or any automation
• Operating more than one account, by any means
• Sharing tournament answers between players
• Reverse-engineering puzzle data to extract solutions before solving
• Tampering with client-side code to alter timing, scoring, or hint behaviour
• Any other behaviour that the operator, acting reasonably, believes to be cheating or coordinated abuse

We use hashed IP and device fingerprinting (see the Privacy Policy) to detect multi-account play. We log puzzle-session events server-side and may review them before paying out a prize. We may withhold payment pending review.

6. Claiming a prize

If you finish in the top 5 of the Weekly Pie:

1. We'll email you within 48 hours of the week closing, using the email on your account.
2. You have 14 days from that email to respond and provide:
   • A clear photo of government-issued photo ID (driver's licence, passport, or proof of age card) showing your name and date of birth
   • Your payout details — a PayPal email or Australian bank account in your own name
3. We verify the documents (KYC) within 7 business days. If anything is unclear we'll email you to ask.
4. Once verified, we pay out within 7 business days. Total typical turnaround: under 3 weeks from the week closing.

If you don't respond within 14 days, your prize is forfeit and added to the following week's prize pool.

For total payouts above AUD $1,000 in any rolling 30-day window, we may require additional identity verification to comply with the AML/CTF Act 2006 and AUSTRAC reporting requirements.

7. Tax

Cash prizes from a genuine game of skill are generally not considered assessable income for Australian tax purposes. However, this depends on your individual circumstances — particularly if you play frequently and prize income forms a regular part of your earnings.

PuzzlePie cannot give tax advice. If you're unsure how prize money affects your tax situation, please speak to a registered tax agent or accountant.

8. Disputes

If you believe you've been wrongly disqualified, mis-ranked, or excluded from a payout, email support@puzzlepie.com within 7 days of the week's close. Include:

• Your username
• The week in question
• What you think went wrong

We review every dispute and respond within 5 business days. Decisions made by the operator in good faith after reviewing the evidence are final.

9. Changes & cancellation

• We can adjust prize amounts, split structure, qualification rules, or scoring formulas for future weeks only. We won't change rules for a week that has already opened.
• We can cancel or pause a tournament mid-week if we identify a critical bug, exploit, or other integrity issue. If a week is cancelled, the prize pool rolls over to the next week.
• We can suspend the Pie tournament entirely with at least 14 days' notice posted on the site.

10. Operator

The Weekly Pie Tournament is operated by PuzzlePie — [ABN / business name to be added on registration as a sole trader or company]. Mailing address available on request.

For all questions about these rules, prize claims, or disputes: support@puzzlepie.com.