If you’re a crossword enthusiast, you’re probably familiar with the New York Times. Their Sunday crosswords form the gold standard in the crossword genre: more than 300 different news agencies run their Sunday puzzle each week.
But the Times is no longer a one-trick pony. In the last several years, the news organization has worked to expand the materials it offers subscribers, including in its puzzling section. Most recently, they’ve acquired the newly popular game Wordle for a number “in the low seven figures.” For now, the game has remained free, but at some point in the future, it might go behind a paywall. If that happens, you might be left wondering if it’s worth paying for a Times subscription to get the game. Knowing what other games the Times offers might help you make your decision. Read on to learn more about their games, how to play them, and what type of subscription is required to use them.
What Games Does the New York Times Have?
- The Crossword
The New York Times’ flagship game is its crossword puzzle, which requires a separate subscription from its standard news plan. Interestingly enough, when crosswords first got big in the early 1900s, the New York Times editors eschewed the idea that they would ever create their own. In fact, they published a rather long editorial in 1924 deriding the crossword as “utterly futile” and a “sinful waste.” Players, they said, “Get nothing out of it except a primitive sort of mental exercise, and success or failure in any given attempt is equally irrelevant to mental development.” However, by the 1940s, the newspaper had reversed its stance.
Since the 1950s, the New York Times crossword has been published daily. Certain days of the week have taken on particular significance: for instance, on Sundays, players get not one but two puzzles. Because of the Crossword’s popularity, the Times has created other puzzles, too, including “The Mini.”
- The Mini
“The Mini” is more or less exactly what it sounds like: a mini crossword puzzle. Rather than being 21 x 21 squares, like the original puzzle, it is a brief 5 x 5 squares, or 6×6 squares on the weekend. Additionally, the words hidden in the puzzle are considered easier to guess than those in the larger puzzle. This makes “The Mini” a great game for people who are still developing their crossword skills, or even for younger people. Additionally, clues tend to skew younger or more universal. That means players don’t have to worry about coming up with the name of an obscure 1960s band or the scientific name for a jungle toad.
- Spelling Bee
The third of the New York Times’ top three games is Spelling Bee. A newer addition to the Times’ repertoire, this puzzle has run daily since 2018. In the game, players are presented with seven letters arranged in a circular shape, with six letters on the outside and one letter in the middle. The challenge of the game is to see how many words can be formed using the letters they are given. The twist: all words must be longer than four letters, and all words must contain the center letter. The more words you can guess, the more points you get.
Like the Crossword, this game isn’t entirely free. You can play up to six guesses before you’re asked to subscribe to keep going. So, like the crossword, the full game is exclusive with the NYT puzzling subscription.
- Tiles
Unlike the other NYT games we’ve covered thus far, this is a purely visual game, with no words involved. In it, a player is shown a board with dozens of squares, each of which contains several shapes. The goal of the game is to eliminate the shapes from the board by clicking two squares that contain at least one shape in common. When two squares are matched, the shapes will disappear. The player then has to click a third square which contains a different shape also contained in the second square. It might sound confusing, but once you get the hang of it it’s quite simple – and addicting! Players get three free games a day.
- Sudoku
This game can’t exactly be said to be a New York Times trademark, but it is a classic. Since Sudoku first became popular in the early 2000s, millions of puzzles have been played and sold around the world. So it’s no wonder that the Times is offering their own version of the game.
In Sudoku, players are given a 9 x 9 grid of spaces which they have to fill in with the digits from 1 – 9. Each row and column contains only one of each letter. Additionally, the board is split into nine sub-squares which also contain one of each digit. It’s very easy to customize difficulty levels in Sudoku. That’s probably why the Times offers three levels: easy, medium, and hard, making it suitable for players across a range of ages and experience levels.
- Vertex
Another fun visual game is Vertex. As in Connect The Dots, players are shown dots on a half-finished board. The dots are labeled with numbers that represent how many lines will branch out from that dot. For instance, a dot labeled with the number ‘3’ means that there will be three lines that originate at that dot. The player has to draw lines between the numbered dots to create a shape. In doing so, they must make sure that each dot starts the correct number of lines: not too few, and not too many. When they are finished, they will see a final, colored-in version of the image they have been creating. This game can definitely suck you in, so don’t tackle it on a busy afternoon!
- Letter Boxed
One of the trickiest of the New York Times’ games is Letter-Boxed. This puzzle is somewhat similar to Spelling Bee, in that players are given a certain number of letters and asked to form words out of them. However, the game is made more complex by the fact that the letters are arranged in a box. Players are also asked to ensure adjacent letters do not come from the same side of the square. Moreover, the last letter of the word you play must start the next word. And, finally, instead of merely trying to find as many letters as you can, the goal is to use every single letter in as few words as possible. These rules definitely make this game a real brainteaser, so it’s probably best suited for those with extensive word puzzle experience. You get one free game a day without a puzzling subscription.
Our Word Games
If the NYT games aren’t for you, check out some of the options on The Word Finder. Our four-, five-, and six-letter Lingles are great for players looking to extend the Wordle craze, or check out our Activity Room for other fun game options.
