I have long dreamed of a better world: one where I would unlock my phone to find the news that my grandpa had challenged me to a game of Scrabble. I will play my words. He will play her. We’ll play back and forth for a few days, and the whole time, no one has to look at the overwhelming technicolor ads with the deceptive skip button that makes us pop up more and more. It’s a simple life.
You would think such an app already exists. You would be wrong. Until now. (Zynga, I will never forgive what you have done to Words with Friends).
Finally, New York Times Games has made my simple dreams come true with a Scrabble-like multiplayer app they call it Crossplayavailable now on iOS and Android.
Crossplay is not a Scrabble clone exactly, but unless you are a Scrabble lover who goes to tournaments or memorizes a Scrabble dictionary, it is basically Scrabble. The game board and tile distribution are slightly different, and there is a slight rule change when the bag runs out of tiles. These distinctions may be made for legal reasons. As a casual player, I barely noticed them.
Like other social word games, Crossplay lets you invite friends to play, or you can be matched with others close to your skill level. For New York Times Games subscribers, the game will have no ads, but free users may see some banner ads. Still, it beats paying $10 a month to remove ads from Words With Friends, but still have to deal with the cartoon-like interface among other features that annoy me.
While Scrabble purists may quibble about slight rule changes, they may find delight in a feature of the game called CrossBot. Like WordleBot and ConnectionsBot, CrossBot analyzes your every game move to determine if you’ve made a better move. It ranks the gameplay in terms of both luck and strategy, then highlights the two best moves, and those where you faltered.
The New York Times has been publishing crossword puzzles since 1942, but the digital game business started to thrive in 2022. buy Wordle after it went viral. According to data from Value Act Capitalhedge funds that invest in the Times, registered users other times in the Games app instead of the actual News app by the end of 2023.
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I’m not the only one who dreams of multi-player word games without egregious interruptions – Jonathan Knight, Head of Games at the New York Times, thinks this is what makes Vertical Games so successful.
“Games like Spelling Bee and Wordle found a way to take that magical feeling of ‘solving a puzzle’ and make a mainstream, fast, snackable version that works well on your phone, that you can share with friends and family, and I appreciate your time,” Knight told TechCrunch. “You can just decide to do it in the morning, or at night before going to bed, then go to sleep.”
According to the New York Times, Wordle will be played 4.2 billion times by 2025. Connection will be played 1.6 billion times.
When TechCrunch spoke with Wordle creator Josh Wardle shortly before the game went on sale, he shared a similar mindset with Knight. He told us, “people have an appetite for things that do not want anything from you.”
Sure, publicly traded companies like the New York Times aren’t as pure-hearted as indie developers who make games for their peers, but the spirit of the game remains. Even when the time of the Wordle virus passed, people continued their daily habits, according to Knight.
“The share rate on Wordle — the percentage of users who share each day — hasn’t changed since we got the game,” he said. “It’s a wonderful way to bring people together. You know, we saw the Pope talking about Wordle, with his brother.”
Now, Knight’s team wants to extend the simplicity of the game’s philosophy to Crossplay.
“We wanted people to be able to just get and play games with friends and family, and then continue with the day,” he said.