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S-Tier.
The New York Times’ Spelling Bee puzzle is celebrating its 2,500th edition today. To mark the occasion, today’s puzzle is the first with the letter S, which should open up a lot of fun possibilities for words. Try it here.
Samsung’s daily trivia game is coming to phones.
The Six, which launched in June on Samsung Smart TVs, is launching today in the Samsung News app on Galaxy phones.
Here’s Samsung’s description of the game, if you’re interested:
The Six offers daily trivia challenges where players compete by answering six questions on topics ranging from entertainment to world history, with faster correct answers earning higher scores.
A Strands archive has shut down because of an NYT DMCA takedown notice.
One free Connections archive: gone.
After receiving a cease and desist letter from The New York Times, the owner of a Connections creator that also had a full archive of the NYT’s puzzles has removed it. You can still make puzzles on the site and play other creations, if you want.
The New York Times is trying to shut down a popular Connections puzzle creator
The New York Times wants to shut down a copy of its popular Connections word game. The publication sent a cease and desist letter to the owner of a website that lets you make your own Connections games. The site also has a full archive of all of the NYT’s past Connections puzzles, which the NYT keeps behind a paywall.
The Connections creator website is built and run by Anthony Salazar, a freelance web developer who runs the creative studio Swellgarfo. Earlier this month, striking New York Times tech workers used Salazar’s Connections tool to make their own strike-themed puzzle. Salazar previously told me that he built the archive using the NYT’s publicly available API.
Words With Friends takes on Wordle with new single-player daily puzzles
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Wordle’s success has caused an explosion in newspaper-style puzzle games, and now Words With Friends is getting in on the action. The long-running word game is adding four solo modes that can be played daily, and they’ll sound familiar to those who use The New York Times’ gaming app.
The new games include a mini crossword puzzle; a word search; Word Wheel, which is about connecting letters to create words; and a word guessing game called Guess Word. You can see what they all look like in the gallery below:
NYT tech workers are making their own games while on strike
Striking New York Times tech workers have created a “Guild Builds” page dedicated to strike-themed games you can play, including a spin on Wordle, a word search, and the custom Connections I reported on earlier today.
As part of its strike announcement on Monday, the New York Times Tech Guild requested that people don’t cross the digital picket line to play the NYT’s daily puzzle games. This collection of five other games offers an alternative if you want to support the striking workers but also do some brain teasers.
Striking NYT tech workers made a custom Connections so you don’t cross the picket line
A meditative take on sudoku that changes with the weather
Image: Puzzmo
The Weather Channel can be a very useful website, but that’s mostly true when the weather is bad. So when the company began collaborating with the Hearst-owned puzzle platform Puzzmo, it had a specific goal: to get people coming to the site even when it’s nice out. “Why would you check the weather on a sunny day?” veteran game designer Zach Gage remembers asking himself. Eventually, the Puzzmo team came up with an answer in the form of Weather Memoku, an extremely chill game that combines elements of memory, sudoku, and, well, the weather.
“A very important idea was: can we change checking the weather from being a thing you check off your to-do list, to being a chance to take a moment for yourself?” explains Gage.
Good morning sports fans.
Daily sudoku is coming to Apple News Plus.
The sudoku puzzles are part of iOS 18.2 in the US, as reported by MacRumors. There are three difficulty levels you can pick from.
Netflix is getting a daily word game from TED.
“Slide rows of scrambled letters to spell words in this thought-provoking word puzzle game from TED,” according to the App Store description for the new game, TED Tumblewords. Seems like the game is trying to be Netflix’s Wordle.
The new game is set to launch on November 19th on Android and iOS, though you’ll need a Netflix subscription to be able to play it.
Images: Netflix
NYT Games is testing Zorse, a new ‘phrase guessing’ puzzle game
Photo by Alexandra Schuler / picture alliance via Getty Images
The New York Times is starting to beta test a new puzzle game called “Zorse,” as reported by Semafor. The game is a “new phrase guessing game where every puzzle is a mash-up of two phrases,” NYT spokesperson Jordan Cohen says in a statement to The Verge. As Semafor points out, the Zorse name “identifies the offspring of a zebra and another equine,” so it seems like the game will focus on wordplay like that.
Cohen says Zorse is currently only available in Canada, meaning I can’t play it myself. But my Canada-based colleague Andrew Webster gave it a shot and told me about it; the game sounds a bit like Wheel of Fortune with a puzzle-y twist.
Now you can suffer through old Connections puzzles.
The New York Times is adding a Connections archive as a benefit for NYT Games and NYT All-Access subscribers. It’s available first for mobile web and desktop and will come to the NYT Games mobile app later this month.
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Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
Wordle is now available in virtual reality
Wordle now has a native app for Meta Quest so that you can easily play the game in virtual reality. The free app is available for Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, and Meta Quest Pro.
Based on screenshots in a Meta blog post and an NYT video, the game looks like, well, Wordle in VR: you’ll have six attempts to guess a five-letter word. But if you have wanted to play the game in an app on your Quest, that’s now something you can do.
The NYT’s Connections will now track your winning streak. Or, for me, lack thereof.
I already find Connections, which I look forward to every day, incredibly stressful. But now there’s the added pressure of keeping up a streak, thanks to the new statistics tracked by the game. I already fret enough about my Wordle streak!
Mini glory.
The New York Times is launching a hall of fame for the Mini Crossword. 25 solvers will get a spot by submitting scores from August 14th and August 21st, and if you make it into the hall of fame, you’ll get a personalized mini trophy that the NYT designed in collaboration with Kazuya Washio.
Image: The New York Times
This online puzzle community has a fresh twist on battle passes
Image: Puzzmo / Angie Wang
Everyone seems to want in on newspaper-style casual gaming. While The New York Times is leading the way with Wordle and its iconic crossword, major companies ranging from Netflix to LinkedIn are trying to carve out a place as well. So, when game designer Zach Gage, cofounder of the Hearst-owned site Puzzmo, started exploring the space, he knew the project needed more than great games. He says the goal was to “design a website that isn’t just links to games but is in fact a deeper community experience.” That’s why Puzzmo launched last year with a handful of titles and multiplayer features like leaderboards.
Now both of those aspects are expanding with a new game that’s also introducing new ways to play — inspired by some of the biggest online shooters around.
The New York Times’ excellent word search game is now in its Games app
Image: The New York Times
Strands, The New York Times’ very good word search game, has been officially added to the NYT’s Games app on iOS and Android.
For me personally, this is huge. Strands has become my favorite of the NYT’s games since it launched in beta in March, but I was annoyed that I had to bounce between the app and a browser to complete my daily Wordle, Connections, and Strands. Now, I can do all of the puzzles right in the app over my morning coffee. It’s the little things!
It’s no ‘Mr. Bugs’ Wordy Nugz.’
“The I/O Crossword” isn’t anywhere near as zany as Wordle’s original name, but it is awfully cute. Google says it created the crossword with the help of Gemini Advanced and a bunch of its own developer tools. You don’t have to be a developer to join in and help solved the puzzle, but it would probably help — I’m stumped.
You will never guess Wordle’s terrible, hilarious original name
Wordle is a pretty clever name for the very good word game created by Josh Wardle. But when he was first working on it in 2013, Wardle had another name in mind that isn’t quite as catchy.
“This is true: I was going to call Wordle, Mr. Bugs’ Wordy Nugz,” Wardle revealed as part of a presentation about Wordle at Figma’s Config conference on Wednesday. He also showed a slide that spelled out the name in big yellow letters. “Had I called the game Mr. Bugs, I like to think it would not have been successful.”
I regret to inform you that LinkedIn’s games are very fun
Photo: LinkedIn
I almost didn’t get Pinpoint this morning. Here’s what it taught me about B2B sales.
I’m kidding! But I have to admit something: I’ve been going on LinkedIn every day recently, and I’m having a great time. Last week, the company announced it was adding three games to its app, both on desktop and mobile, as a naked engagement ploy to get you to open the app every day. I hate to say this, but it’s working.
LinkedIn is the latest company to get in on gaming
Photo: LinkedIn
LinkedIn is now in the gaming business. Starting today, users on the LinkedIn mobile app or on desktop can play one of three different games — Pinpoint, Queens, and Crossclimb. You’ll be able to play each game once per day, and after your daily session, you’ll get access to all kinds of metrics including your high score and daily streak, different leaderboards, and who in your networks has also played. The games are available here under the LinkedIn News and My Network section on desktop or the My Network tab on mobile.
Here’s a brief rundown of the three games.
If you’re sick of crosswords, check out the new game coming to Apple News Plus.
The Scrabble-esque game Quartiles will arrive with iOS 17.5. Players start with 20 tiles, each with a group of letters, and combine them to form words. The longer the word, the more points you get.
The New York Times is targeting Wordle clones with legal takedowns
Hundreds of games inspired by Wordle, the popular web-based word puzzle, are at risk of being deleted due to copyright takedowns issued by The New York Times. As reported by 404 Media, The New York Times — which purchased Wordle back in 2022 — has filed several DMCA notices over Wordle clones created by GitHub coders, citing its ownership over the Wordle name and copyrighted gameplay including 5x6 tile layout and gray, yellow, and green color scheme.
Two takedown requests were issued in January against unofficial Korean and Bosnian-language versions of the game. Additional requests were filed this week against Wirdle — a variant created by dialect group I Hear Dee in 2022 to promote the Shaetlan language — and Reactle, an open-source Wordle clone built using React, TypeScript, and Tailwind. It was developed prior to the Times’ purchase of the game, according to its developer, Chase Wackerfuss.
English (US) ·