The New York Times Games
The New York Times Games is a collection of casual print and online games published by The New York Times, an American newspaper. Originating with the newspaper's crossword puzzle in 1942, NYT Games was officially established on August 21, 2014, with the addition of the Mini Crossword. Most puzzles of The New York Times Games are published and refreshed daily, mirroring The Times
The New York Times Games is part of a concerted effort by the paper to raise its digital subscription as its print-based sales dwindle. Since its launch, NYT Games has reached viral popularity and has become one of the main revenue drivers for The New York Times. As of 2024, NYT Games has over 10 million daily players across all platforms and over one million premium subscribers. According to one member of staff, "the half joke that is repeated internally is that The New York Times is now a gaming company that also happens to offer news."
History
1942–2014: ''The New York Times'' Crossword
The New York Times has used video games as part of its journalistic efforts, among the first publications to do so, contributing to an increase in Internet traffic; In the late 1990s and early 2000s, The New York Times began offering its newspaper online, and along with it the crossword puzzles, allowing readers to solve puzzles on their computers. This marked the beginning of a digital expansion that would later include a variety of games beyond crosswords.2014–2022: Release
In 2014, The New York Times officially launched The New York Times Games with the addition of the Mini Crossword. In the same year, The New York Times Magazine introduced Spelling Bee, a word game in which players guess words from a set of letters in a honeycomb and are awarded points for the length of the word and receive extra points if the word is a pangram. The game was proposed by Will Shortz, created by Frank Longo, and has been maintained by Sam Ezersky. In May 2018, Spelling Bee was published on NYTimes.com, furthering its popularity. In February 2019, the Times introduced Letter Boxed, in which players form words from letters placed on the edges of a square box, followed in June 2019 by Tiles, a matching game in which players form sequences of tile pairings, and Vertex, in which players connect vertices to assemble an image.2022–2024: Acquisition of ''Wordle''
In January 2022, The New York Times Company acquired Wordle, a word game developed by Josh Wardle in 2021, at a valuation in the "low-seven figures". The acquisition was proposed by David Perpich, a member of the Sulzberger family who proposed the purchase to Knight over Slack after reading about the game. The Washington Post purportedly considered acquiring Wordle, according to Vanity Fair. At the 2022 Game Developers Conference, Wardle stated that he was overwhelmed by the volume of Wordle facsimiles and overzealous monetization practices in other games. Concerns over The New York Times monetizing Wordle by implementing a paywall mounted; Wordle is a client-side browser game and can be played offline by downloading its webpage. Wordle moved to the Timess servers and website in February. The game was added to the NYT Games application in August, necessitating it be rewritten in the JavaScript library React. In November, The New York Times announced that Tracy Bennett would be Wordles editor.In March 2023, the NYT Crosswords app was renamed to NYT Games to address the application's other games, including Wordle, Spelling Bee, Tiles, and Sudoku. According to Jonathan Knight, chief executive of The New York Times Games, the Times was concerned over how the application would rank in search results for "crossword". In July 2023, The New York Times introduced Connections, in which players identify groups of words that are connected by a common property. In April, the Times introduced Digits, a number-based game; Digits was shut down in August.
2024–present: Further growth
In 2024, NYT Games playerbase grew exponentially. In June 2025, according to official statistics of the previous year shared with The Verge by New York Times spokesperson Jordan Cohen, NYT Games puzzles were played 11.1 billion times, while Wordle, Connections, and Strands were played 5.3 billion, 3.3 billion, and 1.3 billion times, respectively.In March 2024, The New York Times introduced the beta game Strands, a word game in which players connect letters in a grid to reveal a group of words sharing a common theme. It left the beta stage and became a full game in late June 2024 while also being added to the NYT Games app. In August 2024, it was announced that Vertex would be discontinued at the end of the month. In September 2024, The Athletic, in partnership with The New York Times Games, launched a sports edition of Connections in beta. The next month, Zorse, a phrase guessing game where every puzzle is a mash-up of two phrases, entered beta in Canada. Connections: Sports Edition officially launched on February 9, 2025, to coincide with Super Bowl LIX.
On April 18, 2025, Pips, a logic puzzle in which players place dominoes on a gameboard in order to satisfy certain conditions, entered beta in Canada; On June 10, 2025, NYT Crossplay, a multiplayer word game with gameplay similar to Scrabble and Words with Friends, was launched in beta in New Zealand on iOS. Crossplay is their first standalone app outside the NYT Games app. On August 18, 2025, Pips left beta and was officially launched; the launch made Pips the second logic puzzle besides Sudoku on NYT Games, and its first original logic puzzle. By the end of August 2025, the Mini Crossword was changed from free-to-play to requiring a subscription to play daily, with Tiles and Letter Boxed also moving behind the subscription. Additionally, the Spelling Bee no longer allowed players to play for free to the "Good" or "Solid" levels, instead only allowing a few word plays before requiring a subscription. In September 2025, a Strands archive was introduced. Crossplay left beta and launched in the United States on January 21, 2026.
List of games
''NYT Games'' app & website
Others and betas
''The New York Times Magazine'' variety puzzles
In addition to the primary crossword, the Times publishes a second Sunday puzzle each week of varying types in The New York Times Magazine. Currently, every other week features a rotating selection, including an acrostic ; other kinds of crosswords ; word puzzles of other formats ; and, more rarely, other types.As well as a second word puzzle on Sundays, the Times publishes a KenKen numbers puzzle each day of the week. The variety page also includes three smaller puzzles: a Spelling Bee by Frank Longo, one of several word puzzle formats by Patrick Berry, and a series of Japanese-style logic puzzles by Wei-Hwa Huang and others. The Times also offers a monthly bonus crossword with a theme relating to the month.
Acrostic puzzles
The acrostic, in particular, has the longest history. The puzzle began publishing on May 9, 1943, authored by Elizabeth S. Kingsley, who is credited with inventing the puzzle type, and continued to write the Times acrostic until December 28, 1952. From then until August 13, 1967, it was written by Kingsley's former assistant, Doris Nash Wortman; then it was taken over by Thomas H. Middleton for a period of over 30 years, until August 15, 1999, when the pair of Cox and Rathvon became just the fourth author of the puzzle in its history. The name of the puzzle also changed over the years, from "Double-Crostic" to "Kingsley Double-Crostic", "Acrostic Puzzle", and, finally since 1991, just "Acrostic".Former
Popularity
Playerbase
Since its inception, The New York Times GamesSocial
NYT Games has had major impact on popular culture and discourse, including online. Social media in particular contributed to its rising popularity, with users posting their NYT GamesThanks to its popularity, some NYT Games