![]() “But increasingly-with cooking, with games, with Wirecutter, with audio-there are these planets that rotate around that sun, and that is an essential part of our strategy.” “We think of the news as the sun in our solar system,” explained Knight. Their separate games subscription means that they still monetize that audience, even if some of them never interact with the news product. For some publishers like the NYT, this isn’t a problem. But the gap between a habitual puzzler and a reader still remains. Puzzles may be an excellent way to keep people coming back to publisher sites on a regular basis. It’s an experiment for now, with the purpose of pulling new readers in by building habits. Readers can play as many as they want, and will only hit the metered paywall when they try to read an article. So it means developing a deeper relationship, not just with the puzzle, but with The Atlantic as a whole.”īoth the Vulture 10×10 and New York Magazine’s other puzzles sit outside the paywall. “It’s useful because people are going from the puzzle to reading. “If people are developing a regular relationship through the puzzle, meaning they’re coming back every day, these puzzles become a ritual,” she said. LaFrance sees this approach as habit-building. NYTIMES GAMES FREEThe Atlantic’s crossword is also free to play. But looking at where the subscriber walls fall on other NYT games, it is not inconceivable that leaderboards or additional levels could be added to Wordle as a subscriber-only perk. They have no plans worked out for any other layers to it yet. Knight is committed to keeping the popular word game free on the site. “We want more people spending more time with the New York Times, and plays a key role in that,” Knight commented. The hope is that newly-acquired Wordle will introduce even more people to the NYT’s stable of games. Similarly the Spelling Bee word game has higher ranks of the game that are only accessible to subscribers. ![]() “That’s a great example of how we’ve managed to build a huge audience with daily engagement on a game that has a couple of layers to it,” Knight explained. But if a user wants to be a part of the leaderboard and compete with friends, that’s a subscriber benefit. Their ‘The Mini’ crossword is free to play for everyone. The New York Times has taken a layered approach to its puzzles in order to entice players. “In addition to all the journalism we provide, we were drawn to the idea of giving people a moment of whimsy,” explained Executive Editor Adrienne LaFrance. This one gets a little bigger and more challenging as the week goes on. The Atlantic launched its mini daily crossword puzzle in October 2018, ahead of the publisher’s wider digital subscription drive. “You can put 10 crosswords side by side, and you can clearly pick out the one that Vulture published, because it feels like us.” “There’s a clarity and simplicity to making it a pop culture puzzle that everybody can immediately understand,” Janowitz added. But it also sits comfortably alongside the flagship New York crossword.Īs the biggest site in the magazine’s network, Vulture made the most sense to house the new puzzle. The 10×10 format is a relatively digestible puzzle that can typically be solved in under six minutes. But eventually we realized that what made the most sense was to start with something we already had,”said Vulture Editor Neil Janowitz. The 10×10 puzzle, housed under the Vulture brand, is entirely focused on entertainment and pop-culture. Sensing an opportunity with a new wave of daily puzzle enthusiasts, New York Magazine announced a new crossword in January – with a twist. “We have a lot of people who are coming to read the news, and then the games are the ‘dessert’ at the end of the meal.” ![]() “We see it as a great diversion from the news, when the news can often be quite rough,” he said. Jonathan Knight, The New York Times’ General Manager of Games, sees a correlation between daily engagement with the games and long term retention. ![]() As the pressure to gain and retain subscribers grows, publishers are using puzzles not just to build habit, but to open a two-way relationship with readers – and their friends. The subscription behemoth isn’t the only publisher looking to level up in games. However, it also reinforced the NYT’s ambition to be the destination for people spending time online. It serves as a useful reminder of the value of simplicity in creating a successful game. Last month’s Wordle acquisition by The New York Times hit headlines inside and outside the media world. ![]()
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