NYT Games: Word Games & Sudoku
June 16, 2024
More About NYT Games: Word Games & Sudoku
WORDLE
Play the original Wordle — created by Josh Wardle — in our app. Guess the 5-letter word in 6 tries or less. Then, sharpen your everyday strategy and see how you stack up against the WordleBot, our robotic companion to the puzzle.
SPELLING BEE
Is scrambling your strong suit? Play the daily Spelling Bee and see how many words you can make with 7 letters.
THE CROSSWORD
Subscribers can play the same daily puzzle that’s printed in The New York Times, in our app. Crosswords increase in difficulty throughout the week, so there’s something for everyone.
CONNECTIONS
Our newest word game lets you group words with a common thread. See if you can do it with 4 mistakes or fewer.
SUDOKU
Looking for a numbers game, minus the math? Play Sudoku and fill each 3x3 set of boxes with numbers 1–9. Play a new puzzle every day in easy, medium or hard mode.
THE MINI CROSSWORD
The Mini is all the fun of The Crossword, but you can solve it in seconds. These word games don’t increase in difficulty throughout the week and feature simpler clues.
TILES
Unwind while you match elements in the day’s pattern — the key is to make consecutive matches.
LETTER BOXED
Create words using letters around the square. Letter Boxed is another fun way to test your word-making skills.
STATS
Track your progress for The Crossword, Wordle and Spelling Bee. For The Crossword, monitor your average solve times, see how many puzzles you can solve in a row, and more. Plus follow your streak on Wordle, and track how often you reach each level in Spelling Bee.
LEADERBOARDS
Start a friendly competition with The Mini leaderboards. Add up to 25 friends to see who can solve today’s Mini puzzle the fastest.
PUZZLE ARCHIVE
Subscribers can now solve past Spelling Bee puzzles, plus play over 10,000 crosswords in our archive.
DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION OPTIONS:
You can purchase a monthly or annual New York Times Games subscription.
Enjoy unlimited gameplay, The Crossword archive and more with a monthly or annual subscription. See our subscription offers for further details.
BY DOWNLOADING THE NEW YORK TIMES GAMES APP, you agree to:
• The automatic renewal terms stated above.
• The New York Times Privacy Policy: https://www.nytimes.com/privacy/privacy-policy
• The New York Times Cookie Policy: https://www.nytimes.com/privacy/cookie-policy
• The New York Times California Privacy Notices: https://www.nytimes.com/privacy/california-notice
• The New York Times Terms of Service: https://www.nytimes.com/content/help/rights/terms/terms-of-service.html
Please note: A subscription to New York Times Games does not include access to any other New York Times products, including but not limited to nytimes.com, New York Times Cooking, Wirecutter, mobile news content and other apps on non-iOS devices.
Latest Version
5.11.0
June 16, 2024
The New York Times Company
Word
Android
5,558,939
Free
com.nytimes.crossword
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User Reviews
Ellen L.
6 months ago
5/17/25: problem with wrong letters in squares, so not getting finished! Have to log out and restart my phone, and suddenly the ole has different letters in it! 8/25 update: loads faster - still not as fast as before. Prior update: takes forever to load and update home screen & archive screen 15 - 30 seconds of blank screen. Even then, often the current puzzle is greyed out & I have to refresh - 15-20 seconds again. Was not this slow before
Marti Chance
7 months ago
I love the games and play wordle, connections and spelling bee everyday. As a recent mover from iOS there's two key improvements I'd like to suggest. 1- on wordle, add in wordle bot for android. 2- in spelling bee,getting back to the game from spelling bee buddy takes 3-4 extra clicks (most times it takes me back to games home page, and sometimes nyt home page) which is annoying. Thanks!
Sara Whitney
5 months ago
The games are enjoyable even without the subscription, but I'm on the U.S. East Coast (UTC-4) and whatever timer the app is running on keeps flipping over the puzzles to the next day sometime between 8-10 pm, which seems way too early for a daily/time sensitive app. The weird transition times have also broken some of my streaks which is very annoying.
Kaydi Deutsch
6 months ago
Like others have said, I also have a problem with the keyboard and it affects my time on the mini so that's frustrating. Also I want to be able to play the Sudoku every day but it is not archived, and because it changes when the new crossword comes out, I end up missing it all the time. I'm in PST so on the weekend I only have until 3 to complete them. And so if I work or have plans during the day I can't play and it's really upsetting. I hope that this is one of the games that will be archived
Robyn Henley
6 months ago
I love the daily games! And I love the leaderboard feature for the mini. I just wish there was a chat box feature there. Another glitchy thing is if I log in later in the day and play the mini, it's always the next days mini. That's an annoying thing. There should be a button to play the next day instead of switching out the puzzle.
Lizzardicus Spork
7 months ago
LOVE the majority of the games. The "social/friends" leaderboard aspect is pretty lackluster; not the easiest method to connect/add friends/contacts who play, and you can't see their Wordle stats, etc. I kinda figured you'd be able to see how they do in ALL the different games of whoever you add to your leaderboard...nope, guess not. Also...when are we gonna be able to see our whole history/stats of Worldle??? (Be able to go back and access exactly how we played on whatever date)
Sean Mackin
6 months ago
I posted a review about a month ago. The issue with the Wordplay blog was fixed. However, I also mentioned that letters have started disappearing from the puzzle. They haven't fixed the issue. This app still has a long way to go, but I'll upgrade my review from 1 star to 2 stars. Update: Now the developer wants me to email them to report that letter are disappearing from the puzzles. Still an issue a year later. Can a rate an app zero stars?
John S Mayers
7 months ago
Personal statistics disappeared despite having an active account and being logged in. 'Spelling Bee' only allows 'Solid' level with a free account. UI and navigation lack consistency across games. Virtual keyboard sensitivity and speed responsiveness are highly variable. Improvements are very past due but tolerable with a free account. I would not pay for a subscription with these issues.
Ryan Saxon
7 months ago
New version is awful. There are now screens you have to click through to get to the games that serve no purpose at all, and you can't solve offline. You used to be able to load a few crosswords to "cache" them locally ahead of time when you knew there'd be no signal. Now you can't even open a crossword. User testing is worth the effort.
Robert Jenista
6 months ago
Great games because it's the NYT. But after a recent update, anytime you leave the app and come back it returns you to the home menu. The app used to leave you in whichever puzzle you were working on; now you have to click through several menus to get back. Annoying in general, but a real pain in the neck if you're working on an archive puzzle.
Chris Dodge
7 months ago
The functionality of the keyboard is miserable for me. Sometimes it doesn't register a touch at all, sometimes (especially on certain keys, like P) it registers a touch, the letter key pops up above as if I'm touching it, but then the pop-up gets stuck, nothing is typed, and I have to tap the same letter once more to get the popup to go away, then again to type the letter. Also, how come we don't get Statistics button on the bottom like the iPhone version?
David M. Miller
6 months ago
Slight improvement. Now it loads crossword puzzles while online, so they'll be available offline (a MUST HAVE for the NYC subway}. But something new broke: Now, occasionally, upon completing a crossword puzzle and returning to the main screen (offline), the puzzle appears with no star, as if it was still in progress. And when re-entered, the puzzle itself behaves as if it was completed (changes cannot be made), yet the timer continues to run. It doesn't correct itself when back online again.
Erika B
7 months ago
Worked perfectly fine for a year and then suddenly stopped working. Tried all the troubleshooting steps, including: clearing cache, uninstalling and reinstalling (three times) and logging out. It currently will not load any of the games or let me log in. I am able to log-in online via a web browser. But that defeats the purpose of an app. Edit: after the fourth reinstall, and waiting about 12 hours after that, it began working again.
jessica ann willis
6 months ago
I play a few of the games regularly. The 1 thing that truly irritates me though is Spelling Bee. I mostly enjoy it but... So many standard, in the dictionary, regularly used words are "not in the word list." It's absurd. Furthermore, there seems to be no logic behind what is included and what isn't. More technical words are often excluded, not always. If I, N, G are among the letters, some gerunds are accepted and others not. It falls short of my expectations for NYT. Please fix it
Kay M
5 months ago
I really wanted to enjoy this one, but you can't play all the games or multiple times without paying/subscribing. BS. And the Tiles game game keeps saying no match and dropping me to zero, even though I repeat the very same match and it works fine? Definitely not something I'd pay for in the first place, knowing how easily it would say I made a wrong match, when it wasn't. BS.
Fiona Ryan
5 months ago
Beware. Any advantages there may be to using the app (versus just playing online) are mitigated by the insane number of tracking attempts made by 3rd parties (e.g., Google MS, Roku, Datadog). Yes, it's the world we live in. That doesn't mean it's right or good. Also the Wordle bot recently added to the app crashes every single time you open it.
Dan Chokola
5 months ago
Great word games. There is a bug in the Android app which causes the leaderboard to fail to load if two or more players are tied. Some of the movement between screens is clunky and inconsistent. Still very fun if you get used to these oddities.
Hail
5 months ago
Overall I love the app and it's way more convenient than using a web browser to play each game daily. My biggest complaint is that the games seem to refresh around 8PM (EST) so I often do the next day's games the night before. To me it's strange to have a daily game switch over that early in the evening. I also often have an issue where it tells me I have no internet/signal when I do still have it according to my phone.
Jen Song
5 months ago
Offline play experience sucks. It shouldn't take 1 minute to load a crossword I downloaded because I'm offline. I should be able to resume games like spelling bee if I'm offline (my progress should be cached somewhere before it needs to sync to nyt servers). I should have the option to auto download new puzzles and games on a daily basis. For plane/subway travelers, offline play is a major use case which is not implemented well right now
Hunt Blatz
5 months ago
The app mostly works well. It functions like an app of apps. For example, some games have archives that are accessible from the app, and some do not. Some games have "dark mode," and some do not. Some games adjust to your device's orientation, and some do not. The games are intended for solitary play, which is not how my wife and I play. We usually solve them together, whether we are together or we are talking on the phone while each logged in. This is sometimes frustrating.
