That’s when the company realized we had an opportunity for a portfolio of games, and not just the Crossword. Spelling Bee plus the Crossword, we were seeing subscriptions generated by Spelling Bee really stack on top of the Crossword subscriptions. We launched Spelling Bee about four years ago. And then steadily began growing game subscriptions in parallel to the news subscription. We launched an iOS app for the Crossword in 2009. We went digital with it early on in the world wide web. But the Crossword has really been that anchor product. We’ve lived with that legacy ever since, with games being a fun distraction from the news. We ran the first crossword puzzle in 1942 on Sunday during a tough news cycle at the time, which was a big choice the paper made. Knight: The anchor product is of course the New York Times Crossword. GamesBeat: How large is the whole portfolio of games? What else do you have? It’s a little something we can all agree on. They continue to engage with the game every day. People have moved into their friend chats, WhatsApp threads and what-have-you. That percentage has not changed since day one, which is incredible. We see a huge percentage of the audience sharing their scores every day. It’s calmed down a bit since then, but we’re seeing a very large audience still engaged with the game every day. New York Times gameboards.īut it was a true phenomenon, a crazy time. That’s when I realized that maybe we had peaked. I was watching Anderson Cooper interview Monica Lewinsky about Wordle on CNN. It’s obviously come down a bit from its height, as any viral explosion will. We’re pretty pleased with the sustained amount of engagement with Wordle every day, from audiences all over the world. Not long after the acquisition we said that Wordle brought tens of millions of new users into the New York Times ecosystem. Knight: We’re not giving out a lot of super specific figures. GamesBeat: Have you talked about how well Wordle has done to date? We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of Wordle with the Times. We’ve had a lot of growth, accelerated by the Wordle acquisition at the beginning of last year. Games are an essential part of our overall strategy as a company. I’m excited and bullish on the opportunity. Jonathan Knight: A little over two years. GamesBeat: It’s an interesting place you’ve wound up. Jonathan Knight is head of games at the New York Times. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview. I talked to Knight about the business recently.
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