The New York Times did not stumble into games. It bought Wordle for a price in the low seven figures in January 2022, added Strands and Connections, and turned a newspaper into a daily ritual. The result is a habit loop that drives subscriptions and engagement while other publishers chase the same play.
The Times Built a Games Business That Funds the Newsroom
As of 2025, New York Times Games had become a major revenue driver. Players worldwide solved over 11 billion puzzles in 2025, with games reaching more than 10 million daily players across all platforms and over one million premium subscribers to games. According to AP News and the Times Company, about half of the company’s 12.33 million subscribers as of September 2025 purchase a bundle that includes games and other products; digital-only subscription revenue increased 14% year-over-year. Company leadership have joked internally that the Times is now a gaming company that also happens to offer news. The Games unit helps fund roughly 3,000 journalists at a time when many outlets are cutting staff.
The NYT Games app generated approximately $11.2 million in in-app purchase revenue in Q2 2024, up from $6.64 million in Q1 2024 and from about $1.74 million in Q1 2020. A Games-only subscription runs $5 per month or $40 annually; the All Access bundle that includes games starts at $4 per month and then $25 monthly after the first year. More people now pay for NYT Games than for news alone in some segments, making games central to the subscription strategy and to the stated goal of reaching 15 million subscribers.
Wordle Was the Gateway; Strands and Connections Locked the Habit
Wordle was created by Josh Wardle, a Brooklyn-based software engineer, as a gift for his partner in January 2021. It had fewer than 100 daily players in early November 2021, then reached 300,000 within weeks and millions by the time the Times acquired it. The Times kept the game free to play and did not change the rules. Wordle brought tens of millions of new users to the Times and accounted for 4.8 billion plays in 2023 out of more than 8 billion total puzzle plays that year. By 2026 the portfolio had expanded: Strands, a word-search game where players uncover themed words and a “spangram” on a 6×8 grid, joined Wordle and Connections. The Times also introduced Crossplay, its first two-player word game, in January 2026, available in a dedicated app with real-time multiplayer and in-game chat.
Connections, launched in June 2023, was created and is edited by Wyna Liu, who joined as an associate puzzle editor in 2020. Everdeen Mason is Editorial Director of NYT Games and oversees Wordle, Connections, Strands, and the rest of the lineup. The games department has grown to roughly 100 people, on par with the business desk, including editors, developers, designers, and data scientists. The human-crafted nature of the puzzles is a deliberate differentiator: these are not algorithmically generated, which the Times uses to justify premium positioning and to build trust.
Monetization and Backlash: The Mini Paywall
On August 27, 2025, the Times put the Mini Crossword behind a paywall, along with Tiles and Letter Boxed. The Mini had been free since 2014. The move triggered sharp criticism: users called it greedy, and some said they cancelled subscriptions in response. Kotaku and The Verge reported that the change coincided with the launch of a new free game, Pips, less than two weeks earlier, which read to many as a swap of free content for paid. The tension is structural. The Times is maximising revenue from games while players who had long enjoyed the Mini as a free daily ritual felt the loss. The company’s bet is that the habit and the bundle are sticky enough that most subscribers will stay.
What This Actually Means
The puzzle empire is not a side project. It is a core part of how the Times makes money and retains subscribers. Wordle, Strands, Connections, and the rest create a daily trigger: play at the same time, share results, maintain streaks. Jonathan Knight, head of games at the New York Times, has said that players who play games are much more loyal to the news than those who do not. The Hook Model—trigger, action, variable reward, investment—is explicitly in play. Other publishers, including The Washington Post, Vox Media, The Boston Globe, Morning Brew, Apple, and LinkedIn, have added puzzles, but the Times’ head start and network effects mean fewer people play those games and less social sharing, so the gap is hard to close. The Times turned a newspaper into a daily games destination and used that to fund journalism. The trade-off is that more of the product is now behind a paywall, and the brand is as much about Wordle and Strands as it is about the front page.
What Are Wordle, Strands, and Connections?
Wordle is a daily word game: one five-letter word per day, six guesses, with shareable results in a grid of coloured squares. The Times acquired it in January 2022. Connections, launched in June 2023, presents 16 words that players group into four sets of four based on a common theme; it is edited daily by Wyna Liu. Strands is a word-search game on a 6×8 letter grid; players find themed words and a spangram that touches two opposite sides, with letters connecting vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. All three are part of NYT Games, along with the Crossword, Mini Crossword, Spelling Bee, Letter Boxed, Tiles, and others. Access is through the NYT Games app, nytimes.com/games, and the News app Play tab. Subscribers can replay past puzzles; non-subscribers face limits and paywalls on some games.
Sources
The New York Times Company, AP News, The New York Times Company, Wikipedia, Nieman Journalism Lab, Kotaku, The Verge, Axios, Digiday, Vanity Fair, NPR