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,^[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.

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.^[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]

2022–present: Acquisition of Wordle and further growth

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]

Current

Former