I have long dreamed of a better world: one where I would unlock my phone to find a notification that my grandma has challenged me to a game of Scrabble. I would play my word. She would play hers. We would play back and forth over a few days, and the entire time, neither of us would have to see any overwhelming technicolor ads with deceptive skip buttons that blast us with even more pop-ups. It’s a simple life.
You would think such an app already existed. You would be wrong. Until now. (Zynga, I will never forgive you for what you’ve done to Words with Friends).
At last, New York Times Games has brought my humble dreams to life with a Scrabble-like multiplayer app called Crossplay, available now on iOS and Android.
Crossplay is not a Scrabble clone exactly, but unless you are the type of Scrabble lover that goes to tournaments or memorizes the Scrabble dictionary, it’s basically Scrabble. The game board and tile distribution are a bit different, and there’s a slight rule change around what happens once the bag runs out of tiles. Those differences may have been done for legal reasons. As a casual player, I barely noticed them.
Like other social word games, Crossplay allows you to invite friends to play, or you can get matched with strangers near your skill level. For New York Times Games subscribers, the game will have no ads at all, but free users might see some banner ads. Still, it beats paying $10 a month to remove ads from Words With Friends, yet still have to deal with a cartoon-like interface among other features that annoy me.
While Scrabble purists may quibble about the slight rule changes, they may find delight in a feature of the game called CrossBot. Like the WordleBot and ConnectionsBot, CrossBot analyzes each move of your game to determine where you may have made a better move. It ranks your gameplay in terms of both luck and strategy, then highlights both your best moves, and those where you faltered.
The New York Times has been publishing its Crossword puzzle since 1942, but its digital gaming business kicked into high gear in 2022 when it bought Wordle after it went viral. According to data from ValueAct Capital, a hedge fund that invests in the Times, users spent more time in the Games app than the actual News app by the end of 2023.
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I’m not the only one who was craving a multi-player word game without egregious distractions — Jonathan Knight, Head of Games at the New York Times, thinks this is what makes its Games vertical so successful.
“Games like Spelling Bee and Wordle found a way to take the magical ‘solve a puzzle’ feeling and create a very mainstream, quick, snackable version of that that works well on your phone, that’s very sharable with friends and family, and that I think is very respectful of your time,” Knight told TechCrunch. “You can just decide to do it in the morning, or at night before you go to bed, and then go to bed.”
According to the New York Times, Wordle was played 4.2 billion times in 2025. Connections was played 1.6 billion times.
When TechCrunch spoke to Wordle creator Josh Wardle shortly before he sold his game, he shared a mindset similar to Knight’s. He told us, “people have an appetite for things that transparently don’t want anything from you.”
Sure, a publicly traded company like the New York Times isn’t as pure of heart as an indie developer making a game for his partner, but the spirit of the game has persisted. Even as Wordle’s viral moment passed, people kept up with their daily habit, according to Knight.
“The share rate on Wordle — the percentage of users that share every day — has not changed since we acquired the game,” he said. “It’s a really cool way to bring people together. You know, we see the Pope talking about his Wordle, sharing with his brother.”
Now, Knight’s team wants to extend the quiet simplicity of its games philosophy to Crossplay.
“We wanted people to be able to just get in and play the game with friends and family, and then get on with your day,” he said.
