This page describes how every piece of content on HintSheet is produced, in enough detail that you can judge whether to trust it. It covers the daily answer pages, the hint pages, the long-form guides, the solvers, and the way errors are handled. It also states plainly where AI tools are used.
The short version: answers come from the games themselves and are checked twice; daily explanations are drafted with AI assistance and edited by a person before publication; guides, hubs and trust pages are written by the editor; and nothing is published before the puzzle it describes is live.
Daily answers
Each supported game is read at its own reset time — the puzzle data that the game serves to its players — and the answer page is generated from that data. For LinkedIn games that is the board, clues and solution; for the Times games it is the puzzle's published data; for the Dle games it is the day's answer for each mode. The rendered boards and lists on the site are produced from that data by HintSheet's own code, not copied from screenshots.
Before an answer is published it is compared against a second independent source. If the two disagree, the page is held and checked by hand. Spelling Bee is the one game whose word list is computed rather than read (the Times does not publish its list); the page states this and the pangram — which is unambiguous — is verified separately.
New York Times puzzles are never published before their puzzle date, even where the data is available earlier.
Where AI assistance is used, and where it isn't
The brief commentary on daily answer pages — a sentence on why a Connections group works, the numbered walkthrough under a Queens board, the note on a Wordle answer's letters — is drafted with AI assistance from the day's puzzle data, using per-game style guides, and edited by the editor before publication. This is disclosed here and in the site footer.
The long-form content — game guides, pillar hubs, the homepage essay, strategy articles, and the trust pages including this one — is written by the editor. AI tools are used the way a research assistant would be: to check a rule, to find a source, to draft an outline. The judgement, the experience and the final text are the editor's.
The solvers are software, not content; their logic is described on each solver page.
Experience and sourcing
The editor plays every game covered on the site daily. Strategy in the guides comes from that play and from tracking the puzzles over time — purple-group mechanisms in Connections, board shapes in Queens, category shapes in Pinpoint — and is revised as the games change. Each guide links to the game's official rules or help page and to at least one independent reference, so claims can be checked.
Every page shows its author, the date it was first published and the date it was last materially changed. The 'updated' date changes only when content changes, never automatically.
Corrections
Errors are corrected the same day they're reported, and the page's updated date reflects the correction. Reports go to the address on the contact page. When a game corrects its own puzzle after publication — which LinkedIn does a few times a year — the page is updated to match and a note is added.
What HintSheet refuses to do
Some choices are permanent.
- No playable copies of any game. The games are their makers'; the site links to them.
- No answers before the puzzle date.
- No affiliate links, sponsored posts, guest content or third-party subdirectories.
- No collection of what you enter into the solvers.
- No invented authors, testimonials or 'user' comments.
Advertising and independence
The site is funded by display advertising. Advertisers have no say in content and no advance knowledge of it. Ad placements are kept away from answers and reveal controls. HintSheet is not affiliated with any game publisher or developer; game names are used to identify the puzzles discussed.