Why puzzle fans lined up around the block for New York Times Games’ first live event

By Alexander Lee  •  August 23, 2024  •

Ivy Liu

The event was unsponsored and tickets were free, though assigned on a first-come, first-served basis. The New York Times did not sell merchandise or subscriptions at the event — though it did give away free Times-branded finger sweatbands — and did not provide specific benefits for NYT subscribers in attendance. All in all, the event was clearly not intended to generate revenue for the Times.

“It’s really just to reward fans of the Mini,” said New York Times crossword editor Joel Fagliano. “The Mini started back in 2014; we had just launched the New York Times crossword app, and obviously it’s a subscription business, and the New York Times crossword is famously hard. We wanted something that was free, that you could come and play every day.”

Lack of revenue plays notwithstanding, the Times did approach the evening as a marketing opportunity, with a team from the company’s marketing department present to manage the event and handle operations on the ground.

And a team was very much needed to handle operations, given the popularity of the event. By the time this reporter showed up — 10 minutes ahead of the 7pm start time — the line to get in had already stretched around the block. A New York Times representative told Digiday that the event was at capacity, a figure “in the hundreds.” In the lead-up to the event, users submitted over 17,000 scores for potential inclusion in a “Mini Hall of Fame” at the NYT office.

The event was a veritable who’s-who of the crossword scene, including NYT Games influencers Brandon and Shane and 2024 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament champion Paolo Pasco, who was the victor of the evening’s live crossword competition.

“The event was a delight,” Pasco said. “I’ve been to a lot of crossword tournaments, but never one that was that fast, that rowdy, or that hosted by Ego Nwodim. I’m honored to have won, and mostly relieved I didn’t choke in front of a large audience of people at a bar.”

The success of NYT Games’ first live event demonstrated the voracious fandom that has arisen around the publication’s gaming products, both via Wordle and beyond. Although Wordle, which the Times acquired in 2022, remains synonymous with NYT Games in many consumers’ minds, the company has developed a dominant presence in the puzzle game space, expanding its offerings to include logic puzzles and math games as well. 

“Wordle has doubtlessly accelerated NYT Games’ growth and aided its newer game launches, but Connections is a bona fide hit in its own right, Crosswords have been running in the paper for 80 years and growing consistently online for decades, Spelling Bee is another enduring title, and so on,” said entrepreneur and media industry expert Matthew Ball. “We should think of NYT’s games app as a bundle, and Wordle has been a large contributor to that bundle’s success, but I don’t think it’s fair to attribute the company’s achievements or strategy in gaming to Wordle.”

A New York Times representative declined to comment on the likelihood of more live NYT Games events in the future and made it clear that last night’s event was not intended to represent a new revenue stream for the company. But there is ample interest in live events centered around the publication’s gaming products, and if the Times were to hold another live gaming event — and perhaps even monetize it this time around — there would be no shortage of interest.

“If there are similar events in the future, I’ll absolutely be there,” said attendee Cameron Montag, who placed third in the competition, with a time of 11 seconds on the penultimate puzzle. “Any chance to mingle with the puzzle community and do some solving is worth it in my book.”

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