Thinking Outside the Box: How the New York Times Crossword Changed the Game

Illustration by Xinyue Deng

It’s the last class of the day and your mind is wandering. Ashamedly, you open the New York Times Games on your browser, unable to resist the fresh puzzles awaiting you. Looking up, you notice rows upon rows of students doing the same—binning words in Connections, filling in The Mini, or making an attempt at the day’s Wordle. This phenomenon is drawing in more than just university students however, as the newspaper’s venture into gaming entertainment has brought millions of users to the site. 

This strategic move has changed the landscape of traditional media, with publications such as The Washington Post creating their own daily puzzles. When pitted against short-form, emotionally charged social media content, publications are struggling to compete for readers’ attention. Now, newspapers are using fun rather than fact to drive traffic to their sites, and the results have been lucrative. However, as audiences’ hunger for interactivity grows, the future of traditional media is called into question. Can a balance be struck between entertainment and news?

A Love Story Worth Tens of Millions: Josh Wardle, Wordle and the NYT Crossword

Before 1942, The New York Times editors were strongly opposed to publishing crosswords in their paper, advertising itself as “strictly a newspaper, without puzzles.” However, following the United States’ entry into WWII, then-Editor Lester Markel wrote a letter to the Times’ publisher, urging them to include the puzzle in the paper. “It is possible that there will now be bleak blackout hours—or if not that, then certainly a need for relaxation,” he wrote. Eighty years later, Wordle provided a similar distraction for its players during the 2021 COVID-19 lockdowns. Propelled by the crossword’s legacy, Wordle and the Games app brought in tens of millions of new users to NYT content, per the 2022 Q1 earnings report. 

In 2021, beloved guessing-game Wordle was released to the public. Originally a gift to creator Josh Wardle’s partner, the game gained 300,000 players in two months. Largely praised for its daily, no-strings-attached format, the website quickly went viral. Just three months after launching, Wardle sold the rights to the New York Times for an undisclosed “low seven figures.” In January 2022, the game was added to the Crossword app, marking a new era for the 173-year-old media giant—where puzzles are a major selling point.

Following the success of Wordle, the NYT launched the beta test for Connections, where players are required to bin sixteen words into four distinct categories. Becoming more than just a crossword app, the NYT rebranded as Games, and further expanded their library. Games grew to include eight unique patented games, which are free to play once daily. On August 26th, The Mini, a bite-sized version of the daily crossword, became only available with the purchase of a NYT subscription, to the dismay of users. Players can purchase the games library for CA$5 per month, or buy the all-access NYT subscription for CA$6.25, which allows users full access to articles and NYT Cooking. 

A New Era for the Times

The current model for building the media giant’s subscriber base—giving users free access to each game once daily—serves as a frictionless entry point, drawing users into habitual engagement. Once familiarized with the brand and website, users are incentivized to gain access to a larger library of games, and more intriguingly, the ability to keep your game data. Wordle’s success can be attributed to the engagement of players on social media, sharing their guesses and attempts with friends, family and followers. Similarly, users can share their results from any of the Games puzzles, which not only promotes the NYT brand, but also provides a heightened user experience in a market where interactivity is a core KPI. 

For the New York Times, Games is considered their “cash cow,” driving revenue by increasing retention in bundle purchases. Noticing this increase in cultural relevance, other publications quickly followed suit. The Washington Post, one of the Times’ largest competitors, began publishing their own in-house game, “On the Record,” which quizzes readers on their knowledge of the week’s top stories. Even LinkedIn, a site designed for professionals, is posting daily puzzles Crossclimb, Pinpoint, and Queens. Nonetheless, the NYT remains dominant among these alternatives, as surveys demonstrate elusive feelings from Gen Z towards other publications. 

The Attention Economy: Media’s Most Valuable Resource

As online content becomes more saturated, companies are shifting their focus to the most finite of resources: time. Researchers have dubbed a new term, the “attention economy,” which describes the principle that consumers’ attention is a scarce and valuable resource. This is particularly relevant when performing market research on Gen Z, who’s estimated to soon surpass Millennials and Gen X in terms of purchasing power. Given that attention spans are estimated to be decreasing rapidly, and the library of available content consumers have at their disposal is seemingly infinite, capturing an “attentive” market share is crucial for any brand. Particularly for brands like the NYT that fall under the “media and entertainment” category.

With 60 per cent of consumers overwhelmed by the amount of content at their disposal, the pressure to offer innovative, new ways for interactivity is mounting. Particularly when facing high churn rates, companies have pivoted to differentiate themselves through personalization, and the appearance that the apps’ features are tailor-made for them. Or, what really draws crowds: the opportunity for users to share their tastes online. In 2016, Spotify launched Spotify Wrapped, a generated report of users’ listening habits for the year. Users became enthralled with sharing their “stats,” blurring the line between “social media” and an app that was once an individualized experience. Suddenly, anything could be interactive and “shareable,” with everything from Starbucks to Reddit having their own annual “wrapped.” For media companies specifically, the challenge lies in keeping customers around all year. With the options spanning wider, and the spare time of the average consumer shrinking, this strategy of shareability, such as the NYT has employed for Games, keeps customers “on the hook.” 

Does “Good for Business” Mean “Good for Journalism?”

“Gamification,” for the NYT and The Washington Post, is the current rollout for improving retention in traditional media. Honouring the Games role as a major revenue driver, the NYT has an entire office floor for their one-hundred staff to craft new puzzles day after day. However, when journalists joke that the New York Times is a “a game company with a newspaper side hustle,”the sentiment is as perturbed as tongue-in-cheek. 

While daily puzzles are recognized as an important tool for subscribership and brand awareness, they are kept markedly separate from news articles on the NYT website, maintaining a barrier between the two forms of content. When employing this strategy, interactive games can be used as a way to keep publications—especially those without the NYT’s pedigree—afloat. Or, create a renaissance for the daily newspaper, which much like the Wordle, can be integrated into one’s daily routine. However, as attention spans diminish, a phenomenon exacerbated by frequent consumption of short-form content, the pool of engaged readers dwindles. As competitors up the ante, working to keep users engaged, it could aggravate the problem, causing readers to disregard written media as a whole.

While the Games empire brought the crossword’s legacy to new heights, it calls into question where the company is headed. As other publications are following suit and expanding their market share in the attention economy, traditional media could lose their edge—their ability to separate entertainment and news in search of truth. Eventually, will fun and games be the only thing audiences care about?