For subscribers to The New York Times who are as interested in solving Wordle or filling in the crossword puzzle as in reading the latest political or business news, Wednesday is a big day.
The Times’ popular Games unit is debuting Crossplay, a Scrabble-like electronic feature that represents its first designed multiplayer game. It becomes the website’s 11th game, joining a lineup of puzzles that were collectively played over 11.2 billion times in 2025.
Ancillary products like Games, a cooking app and the Wirecutter product recommendations have fueled remarkable digital growth at The Times over the past decade.
“It has been a huge boon to the journalism,” said Dan Kennedy, a Northeastern University professor. The Times says it has about 3,000 journalists on staff, its most ever and more than twice what it had a decade ago. It is thriving at a troubled time for the industry: More than 350,000 journalists worked at U.S. newspapers in 2005, and that number was down to 91,550 last year, according to Northwestern University.
Kennedy tries the crossword puzzle — on its easiest day. His Scrabble-loving daughter is likely to be excited about Crossplay. He loves Wirecutter, which on Tuesday touted cat beds and a vibrator that doubled as a necklace. His wife regularly uses the Cooking app, where thousands of recipes for all occasions are available.
“As remarkable as it’s been, I kind of scratch my head at the other news organizations that have tried to replicate it,” Kennedy said. “It just seems like they were so thoroughly beaten to this idea that it’s hard for them to compete.”
A solar system revolving around the news
The Times likens itself to a solar system. The newspaper is the sun, with the other products the planets revolving around it.
Some have jokingly referred to it as a game company that happens to have news. The research company YipitData reported in 2023 that subscribers spent more time in Games than they did with the digital newspaper (the company didn’t respond to questions about whether it had more current data).
The Times reported 12.33 million subscribers by the end of last September, up 9% from 2024 and all but about a half million of them digital. Subscription revenue for digital-only products increased by 14%. About half of Times subscribers buy a $30 monthly package that bundles all of its products, the rest buy portions of what it offers a la carte. Last year saw a decrease in people subscribing to just the news.
“I now get out of bed in the morning knowing that the work I do is advancing the mission that we have as a company — seek the truth, understand the world, keep the journalists independent and well-funded,” said Jonathan Knight, the company’s head of games. “If I can play a role in that, that’s incredibly rewarding.”
Puzzles, contests and games aren’t novel for newspapers;