Developer(s) | The New York Times Company |
---|---|
Publisher(s) | The New York Times |
Platform(s) | Newspaper Web iOS Android |
Release | August 21, 2014 |
Genre(s) | Various |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
This article is part of a series about |
The New York Times |
---|
Publications |
People |
The New York Times Company |
The New York Times Games (NYT Games) is a collection of casual print and online games published by The New York Times, an American newspaper. Originated with the crossword in 1942, NYT Games was officially established on August 21, 2014, with the addition of the Mini Crossword. [1] Most puzzles of The New York Times Games are published and refreshed daily, mirroring The Times' daily newspaper cadence.
The New York Times Games is part of a concerted effort by The New York Times to raise its digital subscription as its print-based sales dwindle. [2] Since its launch, games have become one of the main revenue drivers for The New York Times. [3] [4] As of 2023, The New York Times Games has "over one million" subscribers. [5]
Although crosswords became popular in the early 1920s, The New York Times (which initially regarded crosswords as frivolous, calling them "a primitive form of mental exercise") did not begin to run a crossword until 1942, in its Sunday edition. [6] [7] The first puzzle ran on Sunday, February 15, 1942, and was published under a pseudonym Farrar occasionally used, Anna Gram. [8]
The motivating impulse for the Times to finally run the puzzle (which took over 20 years even though its publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, was a longtime crossword fan) appears to have been the bombing of Pearl Harbor; in a memo dated December 18, 1941, an editor conceded that the puzzle deserved space in the paper, considering what was happening elsewhere in the world and that readers might need something to occupy themselves during blackouts. [7] The puzzle proved popular, and Sulzberger himself authored a Times puzzle before the year was out. [7]The New York Times has used video games as part of its journalistic efforts, among the first publications to do so, [9] contributing to an increase in Internet traffic; [10] 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.
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. [11] 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. [12] In February 2019, the Times introduced Letter Boxed, in which players form words from letters placed on the edges of a square box, [13] 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. [14]
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". [15] The acquisition was proposed by David Perpich, a member of the Sulzberger family who proposed the purchase to Knight [16] over Slack after reading about the game. [17] The Washington Post purportedly considered acquiring Wordle, according to Vanity Fair. [16] 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. [18] Concerns over The New York Times monetizing Wordle by implementing a paywall mounted; [19] Wordle is a client-side browser game and can be played offline by downloading its webpage. [20] Wordle moved to the Times's servers and website in February. [21] The game was added to the NYT Games application in August, [22] necessitating it be rewritten in the JavaScript library React. [23] In November, The New York Times announced that Tracy Bennett would be the Wordle's editor. [24]
In March 2023, NYT Crosswords 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". [25]
In July 2023, The New York Times introduced Connections, in which players identify groups of words that are connected by a common property. [26] In April, the Times introduced Digits, a number-based game; Digits was shut down in August. [27] In March 2024, The New York Times introduced the beta game Strands, [28] a word game in which players connect letters in a grid to reveal a group of words sharing a common theme. [29]
Name | Description | Subscription requirement | |
---|---|---|---|
Daily | Archives/additional | ||
The New York Times Crossword | The Crossword is a daily crossword puzzle both online and in newspaper, syndicated to more than 300 other newspapers and journals. The puzzle is created by various freelance constructors and has been edited by Will Shortz since 1993. The crosswords are designed to increase in difficulty throughout the week, with the easiest puzzle on Monday and the most difficult on Saturday. [30] The larger Sunday crossword, which appears in The New York Times Magazine, is an icon in American culture; it is typically intended to be as difficult as a Thursday puzzle. [30] The standard daily crossword is 15 by 15 squares, while the Sunday crossword measures 21 by 21 squares. [31] [32] | Yes | |
The Mini Crossword | The Mini Crossword (or simply The Mini) is the smaller version of the Crossword by Joel Fagliano, which is 5×5 Sunday through Friday and 7×7 on Saturdays, and is significantly easier than the traditional daily puzzle. | No | Yes |
Spelling Bee | The New York Times Spelling Bee, or simply the Spelling Bee, is a word game in which players are presented with a hexagonal grid of 7 letters arrayed in a honeycomb structure. The player scores points by using the letters to form words consisting of four or more letters. | No | Yes |
Wordle | Wordle is a web-based word game created and developed by Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle. Players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word, with feedback given for each guess in the form of colored tiles indicating when letters match or occupy the correct position. The game was acquired by The New York Times in January 2022 for an undisclosed seven-figure sum; the game was moved to the Times website in February 2022 and remains free for all players as of February 2024. | No | — |
Connections | Connections is a word puzzle in which the player has four attempts to clear a grid of sixteen squares. They must select four squares at a time that fit under a specific category (e.g., dog, cat, fish, and parrot for the category "Household Pets"). It was released for PC on June 12, 2023, during its beta phase. As of 2023 it was the second most played game published by Times, behind Wordle. [33] [34] [35] | No | — |
Letter Boxed | Letter Boxed is a word puzzle that requires players to create words using letters around a square. | No | Yes (for unlimited play) |
Tiles | Tiles is a visual game in which players match identical shapes or backgrounds in every tile. | No | Yes (for unlimited play and Zen Mode) |
Vertex | Vertex is a visual game in which players draw lines between points to create triangles, eventually revealing a hidden image. | Yes | — |
Variety Puzzles | In addition to the Sunday crossword, a weekly variety puzzle appears in the The New York Times Magazine. This rotates every other week between an acrostic (long written by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon) and other kinds of crosswords ( cryptic, puns and anagrams, diagramless, etc.) and word puzzles of other formats (Split Decisions, Spiral, Marching Bands, etc.). [36] The variety page also includes three smaller puzzles: a Spelling Bee by Frank Longo (different from the one online), one of several word puzzle formats by Patrick Berry, and a series of Japanese-style logic puzzles by Wei-Hwa Huang and others. [36] | — | |
Sudoku | The New York Times Games also provides Sudoku in the app and online, with puzzles split into three levels of difficulty and refreshing daily. | No | Yes |
Strands [a] | Strands is a word game in which players connect letters in a grid to reveal a group of words sharing a common theme. [38] | No | — |
Name | Description |
---|---|
Digits | Digits was a number puzzle in which players used six provided numbers and basic arithmetic (add, subtract, multiply, or divide) to reach as close to the target number as possible. Each number can only be used once. The game was launched in beta on April 10, 2023, and was shut down on August 8, 2023. [39] [40] |
Since its inception, The New York Times Games has had impact on popular discussions, including online. [41] Games has become one of the main revenue drivers for The New York Times. [3] [4]
Developer(s) | The New York Times Company |
---|---|
Publisher(s) | The New York Times |
Platform(s) | Newspaper Web iOS Android |
Release | August 21, 2014 |
Genre(s) | Various |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
This article is part of a series about |
The New York Times |
---|
Publications |
People |
The New York Times Company |
The New York Times Games (NYT Games) is a collection of casual print and online games published by The New York Times, an American newspaper. Originated with the crossword in 1942, NYT Games was officially established on August 21, 2014, with the addition of the Mini Crossword. [1] Most puzzles of The New York Times Games are published and refreshed daily, mirroring The Times' daily newspaper cadence.
The New York Times Games is part of a concerted effort by The New York Times to raise its digital subscription as its print-based sales dwindle. [2] Since its launch, games have become one of the main revenue drivers for The New York Times. [3] [4] As of 2023, The New York Times Games has "over one million" subscribers. [5]
Although crosswords became popular in the early 1920s, The New York Times (which initially regarded crosswords as frivolous, calling them "a primitive form of mental exercise") did not begin to run a crossword until 1942, in its Sunday edition. [6] [7] The first puzzle ran on Sunday, February 15, 1942, and was published under a pseudonym Farrar occasionally used, Anna Gram. [8]
The motivating impulse for the Times to finally run the puzzle (which took over 20 years even though its publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, was a longtime crossword fan) appears to have been the bombing of Pearl Harbor; in a memo dated December 18, 1941, an editor conceded that the puzzle deserved space in the paper, considering what was happening elsewhere in the world and that readers might need something to occupy themselves during blackouts. [7] The puzzle proved popular, and Sulzberger himself authored a Times puzzle before the year was out. [7]The New York Times has used video games as part of its journalistic efforts, among the first publications to do so, [9] contributing to an increase in Internet traffic; [10] 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.
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. [11] 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. [12] In February 2019, the Times introduced Letter Boxed, in which players form words from letters placed on the edges of a square box, [13] 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. [14]
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". [15] The acquisition was proposed by David Perpich, a member of the Sulzberger family who proposed the purchase to Knight [16] over Slack after reading about the game. [17] The Washington Post purportedly considered acquiring Wordle, according to Vanity Fair. [16] 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. [18] Concerns over The New York Times monetizing Wordle by implementing a paywall mounted; [19] Wordle is a client-side browser game and can be played offline by downloading its webpage. [20] Wordle moved to the Times's servers and website in February. [21] The game was added to the NYT Games application in August, [22] necessitating it be rewritten in the JavaScript library React. [23] In November, The New York Times announced that Tracy Bennett would be the Wordle's editor. [24]
In March 2023, NYT Crosswords 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". [25]
In July 2023, The New York Times introduced Connections, in which players identify groups of words that are connected by a common property. [26] In April, the Times introduced Digits, a number-based game; Digits was shut down in August. [27] In March 2024, The New York Times introduced the beta game Strands, [28] a word game in which players connect letters in a grid to reveal a group of words sharing a common theme. [29]
Name | Description | Subscription requirement | |
---|---|---|---|
Daily | Archives/additional | ||
The New York Times Crossword | The Crossword is a daily crossword puzzle both online and in newspaper, syndicated to more than 300 other newspapers and journals. The puzzle is created by various freelance constructors and has been edited by Will Shortz since 1993. The crosswords are designed to increase in difficulty throughout the week, with the easiest puzzle on Monday and the most difficult on Saturday. [30] The larger Sunday crossword, which appears in The New York Times Magazine, is an icon in American culture; it is typically intended to be as difficult as a Thursday puzzle. [30] The standard daily crossword is 15 by 15 squares, while the Sunday crossword measures 21 by 21 squares. [31] [32] | Yes | |
The Mini Crossword | The Mini Crossword (or simply The Mini) is the smaller version of the Crossword by Joel Fagliano, which is 5×5 Sunday through Friday and 7×7 on Saturdays, and is significantly easier than the traditional daily puzzle. | No | Yes |
Spelling Bee | The New York Times Spelling Bee, or simply the Spelling Bee, is a word game in which players are presented with a hexagonal grid of 7 letters arrayed in a honeycomb structure. The player scores points by using the letters to form words consisting of four or more letters. | No | Yes |
Wordle | Wordle is a web-based word game created and developed by Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle. Players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word, with feedback given for each guess in the form of colored tiles indicating when letters match or occupy the correct position. The game was acquired by The New York Times in January 2022 for an undisclosed seven-figure sum; the game was moved to the Times website in February 2022 and remains free for all players as of February 2024. | No | — |
Connections | Connections is a word puzzle in which the player has four attempts to clear a grid of sixteen squares. They must select four squares at a time that fit under a specific category (e.g., dog, cat, fish, and parrot for the category "Household Pets"). It was released for PC on June 12, 2023, during its beta phase. As of 2023 it was the second most played game published by Times, behind Wordle. [33] [34] [35] | No | — |
Letter Boxed | Letter Boxed is a word puzzle that requires players to create words using letters around a square. | No | Yes (for unlimited play) |
Tiles | Tiles is a visual game in which players match identical shapes or backgrounds in every tile. | No | Yes (for unlimited play and Zen Mode) |
Vertex | Vertex is a visual game in which players draw lines between points to create triangles, eventually revealing a hidden image. | Yes | — |
Variety Puzzles | In addition to the Sunday crossword, a weekly variety puzzle appears in the The New York Times Magazine. This rotates every other week between an acrostic (long written by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon) and other kinds of crosswords ( cryptic, puns and anagrams, diagramless, etc.) and word puzzles of other formats (Split Decisions, Spiral, Marching Bands, etc.). [36] The variety page also includes three smaller puzzles: a Spelling Bee by Frank Longo (different from the one online), one of several word puzzle formats by Patrick Berry, and a series of Japanese-style logic puzzles by Wei-Hwa Huang and others. [36] | — | |
Sudoku | The New York Times Games also provides Sudoku in the app and online, with puzzles split into three levels of difficulty and refreshing daily. | No | Yes |
Strands [a] | Strands is a word game in which players connect letters in a grid to reveal a group of words sharing a common theme. [38] | No | — |
Name | Description |
---|---|
Digits | Digits was a number puzzle in which players used six provided numbers and basic arithmetic (add, subtract, multiply, or divide) to reach as close to the target number as possible. Each number can only be used once. The game was launched in beta on April 10, 2023, and was shut down on August 8, 2023. [39] [40] |
Since its inception, The New York Times Games has had impact on popular discussions, including online. [41] Games has become one of the main revenue drivers for The New York Times. [3] [4]