All the Online Word Games That’s Fit to Print

The New York Times is no longer a news company. It’s a gaming empire with a newsroom attached. And it is more than crossword puzzles online or word games on a website.

The New York Times was the pinnacle of serious journalism for over a century: the “paper of record,” the gold standard for investigative reporting, the institution that held the powerful accountable. When the Sunday edition landed on the doorstep with a satisfying thud, you knew you were about to dive into world-shaping headlines, deep analysis, and the kind of reporting that actually mattered.

Now? The biggest reason people subscribe isn’t the journalism—it’s Wordle.

How The New York Times Became a Gaming Company – It All Started With Crossword Puzzles Online

The New York Times was where you turned for front-page scoops and everything society, including births, deaths, and weddings. It was an untouchable institution—a beacon of the American Dream itself. And since 1942, it included newspaper crossword puzzles. But over time, things started to shift. Political polarization turned the newsroom into a battleground. Readers on both sides grew disenchanted. The paywall kept tightening. The Opinion section turned into a Twitter warzone. And the news itself? An endless loop of political chaos, economic instability, and cultural division.

Since 1897, the Times has been using the slogan “All the News that’s Fit to Print” on the masthead of its print edition. For the first 100+ years of its publication, that was the main purpose of the NYT. Whether you parted with a coin to buy it, found it on a table at the diner, or had it delivered home, the reason you did was to learn, through clear headlines and long-form journalism, about the world. Not online word games.

I recall the Sunday NYT landing on our doorstep with a thud, a paper with enough sections to divide among family members—my dad taking the sports section downstairs and locking the door, and my sister and I divided the Style and NYT Magazine. Eventually, one of us would find the Sunday newspaper crossword puzzle and, pencil in hand, start filling in boxes with the obvious correct answers. Stumped, the call would go out: “Hey, what’s a three-letter word for ‘measure of resistance’?” From the other room, I’d hear my brother reply, “Ohm”… problem solved. As I’ve written before, the small and satisfying wins from completing the crossword tap into something universal.

The Rise of NYT Games: Where Subscribers Spend Their Time Doing Crossword Puzzles Online

Since its first appearance in 1942, the crossword was the only game available for NYT readers and was provided for no extra charge.

Not so today. The Times has gone all-in on the online world, where about 10.5 million of its 11 million subscribers are online only. Gone are the days of inky fingertips. Instead, you get constantly updated articles, recipes, opinions, politics, style, fashion, pastimes, sports, business, and games.

While much of the content is self-limiting (how many descriptions of the Met Gala gowns can you really take?) or once and done (Golden Globe winners announced, check back again next year), there is one area of content where The Times has found no upper limit: the games section, or as their app says—The New York Times Games.

From Breaking News to Breaking Streaks: Why Readers Checked Out and Started Playing Word Games On Their Phone

Over time, readers didn’t just lose trust in the news—they lost the will to engage with it.

Enter Wordle. The Times’ biggest win of the last decade wasn’t a Pulitzer—it was a viral word game. Since acquiring it in 2022, the paper has gone all-in on gaming, turning what was once a simple crossword section into a full-blown digital arcade.

NYT Games now features:

• Wordle – The internet’s daily dopamine hit 
• The Crossword & Mini Crossword – A mix of challenge and quick wins 
• Letter-Boxed, Strands, Tiles, and Sudoku – A playground of puzzles 

And the numbers tell the story. A March 2024 analysis found that NYT Games now commands more user time than NYT News. The audience isn’t here to read about world events—they’re here to keep their Wordle streak alive.

Gaming the News: The Business Model That  of Keeps You You Hooked

This isn’t just a happy accident. The Times didn’t stumble into gaming—it strategically built a habit-forming, engagement-maximizing digital product.

Look at how integral the Games subscription has become to the NYT’s financial success—it’s not an add-on, it’s the hook.

The Times has, some observers have written, become an online gaming company that just happens to offer an optional newspaper subscription.

The company hired Jonathan Knight, a gaming industry veteran who worked on The Sims, FarmVille, and Words With Friends, to run its Games division. Knight said in a 2023 interview: “We don’t want a portfolio of 30 games that are just blended together in a commoditized way. Our brand stands for quality human-made, edited, and curated.”

His job? Make gaming the most profitable part of The New York Times brand. And it’s working.

Knight isn’t the only one. Before him, there was Will Shortz, who has been at the helm of NYT Crossword creation since 1993. As a cruciverbalist, Shortz turned newspaper crossword puzzles into an intellectual status symbol. His influence helped create the culture that made NYT puzzles aspirational.

Then, with the digital shift, The Times moved from prestige to mass-market appeal and Shortz created crossword puzzles online. The hiring of Knight was the moment everything changed—The Times wasn’t just dabbling in games; it was getting serious about turning them into a business model.

• Subscription goldmine – NYT Games is a standalone paid product, meaning people are now paying just for puzzles, not the news. 
• Built-in addiction – Features like streaks, leaderboards, and social sharing keep users coming back daily. 
• The perfect escape – When the news is an exhausting disaster loop, five minutes of solving a puzzle feels like a tiny act of self-care. 

Why Hard News No Longer Pays (But Daily Puzzles Do)

It’s not just that online word games are fun—it’s that The Times made it more appealing than the news itself. Want to relax and refresh? How about a newspaper crossword puzzle.

Then: “Men Walk on Moon” (1969).

Now: “My Wordle Streak is Dead. I Am Dead.” (2024).

Then: Watergate coverage that took down a president.

Now: A leaderboard that tells you how fast you solved online word games.

The End of an Era? What the New York Times’ Transformation Tells Us.

For those of us who grew up with The Times as the gold standard of serious news, this shift feels like the end of something important. The same institution that broke the Pentagon Papers, investigated Watergate, and shaped world discourse is now best known for its five-letter word game.

Once upon a time, The New York Times told us what mattered. Now, it just asks us to guess a five-letter word or play crossword puzzles online.

Maybe the question isn’t why The Times made this shift. Perhaps the real question is: Why wouldn’t they?