All the news about daily puzzle games

A few years after selling Wordle to the New York Times, creator Josh Wardle has returned with a new word game — albeit one that’s quite a bit trickier. Wardle and a team of collaborators have just released Parseword, a game that tries to make cryptic crosswords easier to understand. “Cryptics are beautiful and rich puzzles but are notoriously hard to learn,” the site’s about page explains. “We wanted to make a game that captures the joy of solving cryptics while making them more accessible to everyone.”

In a profile in the New Yorker, Wardle explained that he struggled with viral success of Wordle and the attention that followed, but he found some refuge in cryptic crosswords, which differ from standard crossword puzzles in that the clues themselves are puzzles. Parseword not only streamlines things to make them more accessible, but also offers a number of tutorials, starter puzzles, and some helpful videos to introduce newcomers to the genre. It also includes three game modes of varying difficulty so veterans can still play.

Netflix is getting into the daily puzzle games trend in a big new way. As part of a bunch of games announcements, the company revealed it would be releasing a new daily puzzle games app called Netflix Puzzled that will feature a bunch of puzzles themed around Netflix’s biggest franchises.

“Get ready for a plethora of daily puzzles featuring Netflix favorites such as Stranger Things, Squid Game, KPop Demon Hunters, Bridgerton, and Emily in Paris,” according to a description from a Netflix blog post. “You’ll find classics like sudoku, fresh takes on old favorites like crosswords and word searches, and more.”

If you’ve ever wanted to make your own Wordle puzzle to challenge (or annoy) your family and friends, The New York Times has announced an official tool that lets you do that.

If you have an All Access or Games subscription, you can make a 4-7 letter puzzle with the NYT’s Wordle creation tool. (You’ll be able to add an optional clue if you want to give the people you share your puzzle a bit of help.) When you’ve made the puzzle, you’ll get a unique URL you can share with others, and they don’t need to have a subscription to be able to play it.

Want to flex your Wordle habit beyond just keeping your streak? The New York Times has added badges to recognize certain achievements in Wordle, Spelling Bee, and Connections.

“Have you achieved the infamous Wordle in 1? What about the Perfect Connections Puzzle? How many Pangrams are under your Spelling Bee belt? Badges are rewards you can earn through gameplay that let you look back on the moments that made your NYT Games journey special,” according to the NYT. In the app, you can even see your badges in “your very own trophy case.”

Jimmy Fallon is helping make Wordle into a television series, Deadline reports. NBC is piloting the Wordle game show with the help of Fallon’s production company, and the show is currently filming in the UK. Savannah Guthrie will host.

Around when Wordle really started to blow up, Jimmy Fallon once spent a whole segment of The Tonight Show solving a puzzle in front of his audience. (The segment aired right before The New York Times bought Wordle from creator Josh Wardle in early 2022.) Fingers crossed this TV show isn’t just one person muddling through a puzzle like Fallon did — I got frustrated watching the segment because I just wanted to make my own guesses. Instead, I hope this Wordle TV show takes cues from Lingo, a game show where teams compete to quickly solve Wordle-like puzzles for prize money. It’s much snappier.

Hooked on LinkedIn’s Queens? Gotta extend your Wordle streak in the New York Times games app before you start your day? You’re in good company on today’s Vergecast episode. Allison Johnson is joined by Simon Anthony and Mark Goodliffe, world-class puzzle champs and hosts of the delightful Cracking the Cryptic, a YouTube channel where they solve a puzzle on camera every single day.

They specialize in sudoku — and not just the classic number games you might be familiar with. Simon and Mark tackle mind-bending, seemingly impossible puzzles, working through it all in real time, sometimes over the course of several hours. What happens when you get stuck? How can you tell the difference between a puzzle made by a human and a computer-generated one? Why are we addicted to puzzle games all of a sudden? They help us crack the clues.

I love sudoku, so I just couldn’t resist checking out LinkedIn’s new Mini Sudoku game that it launched this week. Two puzzles in, I can already tell you that I like it a lot.

The rules in Mini Sudoku are quite similar to regular sudoku: you need to fill in all of the blank spots of a puzzle with a number, but a number can’t repeat in a line, row, or box. But the twist with Mini Sudoku is that it uses six numbers instead of nine, meaning the game has smaller puzzles that are a little easier to take in across a mobile phone screen. You can also make notes and ask for hints if you need them.

There’s a lot going on in the world of Pokémon — and you can play at least one of them right now. During its latest Pokémon Presents presentation, The Pokémon Company surprise launched Pokémon Friends, a puzzle game with daily challenges, an increasingly common style of game. In a cute Pokémon twist, solving puzzles earns you adorable (virtual) plushies you can use to decorate a room. It’s out today on iOS, Android, and the Nintendo Switch.

Elsewhere, we also got looks at a pair of animated adaptations of the franchise. That includes the soothing Netflix series Pokémon Concierge, which is getting a second season on September 4th…

Ever since the New York Times acquired Wordle and went all-in on games, there’s been something of a slow-brewing arms race in the space. The Times continues to release new games, and it’s now up against intriguing competitors like Puzzmo, Netflix, The Atlantic, and even LinkedIn, while established games like Words With Friends have adjusted their offerings in response. Also in that mix is Apple News Plus, which just launched a game that’s a bit like Wordle crossed with emoji.

It’s called simply Emoji Game, and each day you’re presented with three phrases, which have some letters filled in, but are mostly blank. There’s a partial hint as to what the word or phrase is that you’re trying to complete, and then a whole bunch of emoji at the bottom. The idea is to take the words or sounds the emoji represent and use them to fill in the blanks. So — and this is just an example I made up, so it’s not a spoiler — you might be presented with SH_ _ _, and an emoji of an elf. Stick it in there and you have a “shelf.”