This is one person’s website. These are the terms on which you are welcome to use it, written to be read.
1. The short version
Read anything, play the game, keep your flash cards, draw your own worlds. Keep the leaderboard clean, keep UCHRONIA’s historian and your maps free of hate, don’t attack the site or cheat your way up the board, and don’t treat anything here as a service you have paid for. It is free, it is kept up when I have time, and it comes with no guarantees. If you break these terms, I may remove your name, your scores, or your account.
2. Who these terms are between
These terms are an agreement between Noah Darwin Lee (“I” or “me”), who runs noahdarwinlee.com and every page under it (the “site”), and you, the person using it. There is no company involved. You can reach me at noahlee519@gmail.com.
By using the site you accept these terms. If you don’t accept them, please don’t use the site; nothing here requires an account, and nothing costs anything, so leaving costs you nothing either.
3. What you may do
You may read anything on the site; play citylayoutguessr as often as you like; use the flash card tool for your own study, including in teaching and at work; link to any page; and quote the site with credit. You need no permission for any of that, and you will never be asked to pay for it.
4. What you agree not to do
Names. Choose a display name someone would not mind reading. Names that are abusive, hateful, sexual, or that pretend to be someone else are not allowed. The site refuses many of them automatically, and one that gets through may be changed or hidden without notice.
Fair play. Play the daily challenge as it is meant to be played. Reading the answers out of the page, automating guesses, or posting a score any way other than by playing defeats the point of a leaderboard that exists for fun. Scores earned that way will be removed.
The site itself. Don’t try to break into the site or the database behind it, reach anyone else’s account, or overload the site with automated requests that would cost me money or spoil it for others. Ordinary use, even heavy ordinary use, is fine.
Your account. Sign in only with a Google account that is yours, and only if you are 13 or older.
5. Accounts
An account exists so that a name can sit next to a score. You are responsible for the Google account you sign in with and for what is done through it. You can sign out at any time, change your display name from the game’s menu, and have your account and scores deleted by writing to me, as the privacy policy explains.
I may remove a name, hide a profile, delete a score, or close an account that breaks these terms. Where a case is not obvious, I will use my judgement, and you are welcome to dispute it by email.
6. UCHRONIA and its historian
Your maps. The maps you draw in UCHRONIA are yours. When you share one as a link or a file, you are the one sharing it, and the names you give countries and cities travel with it, so they are yours to answer for.
What the historian is. The historian is Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic. What it writes is fiction: invented history about an invented world. It can be wrong about the real history it starts from, it can contradict itself, and it can change your map in ways you did not expect. Undo takes back anything it changes. Don’t rely on it as a source of fact.
What not to ask of it. Wars, empires, and the darkest turns of history are fair subjects for alternate history. Using the historian, or the names on a map, for any of the following is not allowed: anything that celebrates, excuses, or calls for genocide, ethnic cleansing, slavery, terrorism, or hatred of people for their race, ethnicity, nationality, faith, sex, sexuality, or disability; sexual content of any kind; anything that targets, mocks, or harasses a real private person; slurs; attempts to make the historian ignore its instructions or reveal them; and automated or bulk requests. The historian is told to refuse such requests, and I may block access for anyone who keeps trying. Anthropic’s usage policy applies to everything sent to it.
Limits. The historian runs on a small daily budget. Using it requires signing in with a Google account, and each account may make five requests a day, counting histories, redrawn maps, and questions alike; the site as a whole has a daily limit too. Using more than one account to get around the limit is not allowed. I may change those limits, pause the historian, or retire it at any time.
What it writes for you. You may keep, share, and quote the histories it writes for you. They may resemble what it writes for someone else, and I make no claim to them.
7. Who owns what
My work. The writing, design, code, photographs, and artwork on the site are mine, unless they are credited to someone else. You may read them, learn from them, and quote them with credit. You may not copy a page, an artwork, or the game wholesale and present it as your own. If you would like to use something for a project of your own, ask; the answer is often yes.
Other people’s work. The satellite imagery in citylayoutguessr comes from Google Earth and remains the property of its owners. It is used to identify cities and is credited on the game’s page. Anything else on the site that belongs to someone else is credited where it appears.
Your name. A display name you choose stays yours. By posting a score, you give me permission to show that score with your display name and picture on the leaderboard, which is the whole purpose of posting it, for as long as the score stays up.
If you think something here is yours. If you believe something on the site infringes your copyright, write to me with what it is and where it appears, and I will look into it promptly and take it down if you are right.
8. No guarantees
The site is provided “as is” and “as available”, without any warranty of any kind, whether express or implied, including any warranty that it is accurate, fit for a particular purpose, or free of errors. It may be wrong, it may be down, a puzzle may contain a mistake, the leaderboard may lose a score, and a browser update may break something that worked yesterday. I fix what I notice and what people tell me about, on no fixed schedule.
Things kept in your browser, such as a game in progress, your flash card lists, your UCHRONIA maps and histories, and your colour preferences, live only on your device and can disappear if you clear your browser data or switch devices. Keep a copy of anything you would be sorry to lose.
9. Limits on liability
To the fullest extent the law allows, I am not liable for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, arising from your use of the site or your inability to use it. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, and some places give you rights that no page like this one can take away. Where these terms and those rights conflict, your rights prevail.
10. Other people’s sites
The site links to publications, to other projects of mine, and to other people’s work. Those sites run under their own terms and policies, and I am not responsible for what is on them.
11. Which law applies
These terms, and any dispute arising out of them or out of your use of the site, are governed by the law of the State of New York, United States, without regard to its rules on choosing another jurisdiction’s law. Any such dispute is to be brought in the state or federal courts located in New York. If the law where you live gives you the right to bring a claim in your own courts, that right stands. Nothing in these terms requires arbitration or prevents you from joining a class action.
12. Changes and endings
I may change the site, change or retire a game, reset a leaderboard, or take something down at any time. If these terms change, this page changes and the date at the top moves. Continuing to use the site after that means you accept the new version.
13. The rest
These terms and the privacy policy are the whole agreement between us about the site. If any part of them turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands. If I don’t enforce a term right away, I haven’t given it up.