The New York Times (NYT) has a great many things to do on their many websites and apps. They have news articles, as they are primarily a news corporation, as well as New York Times cooking, wirecutter (a product recommending site), The Athletic (sports writing) and the NYT Games. 

The New York Times Games feature has intrigued more and more people and has become increasingly popular. These games contain a number of puzzles, mostly involving words with some objective to either find words or find patterns within them.

One reason the games have gotten more viewership is due to the purchase of Wordle, a quick word game that was extremely popular during the pandemic, and was purchased by New York Times Games on January 31st, 2022. 

They have many games on their website, including a daily Crossword puzzle, the relatively new Connections puzzle in which you find ways words connect together and the nearly brand new Strands puzzle that they just released last month. 

There aren’t many other places online where you can find such a variety of good, short but exciting word puzzles, which has added to their popularity. 

In one game, the “spelling bee” puzzle, you have to make words that include a certain letter from a pool of 7 letters, and you try to find as many words as possible.

In the “letter boxed” puzzle, you connect letters from the edges of a box to string words together, trying to use all of the letters. 

Another aspect that makes them enticing and enjoyable is the fact that they are daily; this keeps users excited and ready for the next day’s puzzle, while not having them lose interest by playing too many in a row. 

The fact that many of these puzzles can actually be difficult appeals to an older audience, so that you don’t just win every time. This can be an underrated feature but if you win every time, a game can often become less fun. 

When a lot of other people are doing something like playing these word games, it often makes you want to play more of these games in order to bond with people. This helps you to be part of the large community of people that play these games. 

The fact that this game is played by many groups and ages of people, from adults, to college students to high schoolers, shows how good of a job the New York Times has done with designing these games. 

I don’t think people are going to stop playing these games anytime soon and I think the fact that the New York Times is spending so many resources on these games will ensure that there will be new and more word games to play in the future. 

Word puzzles are a great way to pass by for a couple of minutes, have a nice time doing it and feel like you are exercising your knowledge.