By Betty Ding (25A01B) and Isaac Chan (25A01B)
“It’s not a distraction if I’m practising for GP.”
Such is the justification of many a Rafflesian, or otherwise student, who plays The New York Times (NYT) Games as a respite from studying (or listening in class). Testing players on their vocabulary, general knowledge, or sometimes seemingly nothing at all, NYT Games are a staple in lots of Rafflesians’ daily routines. Boasting selections like Wordle, Connections, and the Mini Crossword, new puzzles are released every day, and range from trivially easy to mind-numbingly difficult.
We at Raffles Press have taken it upon ourselves to rank these games from our own experience as avid players and input from fellow NYT Games addicts. To fairly rank each game, we have come up with a set of criteria: Ease, Fun, and Popularity, to determine which NYT Game is decidedly the best. All the games ranked will be those offered with a free NYT account, and ranked based on what is available at the free tier.
8th place: Sudoku
Out of all the NYT Games, Sudoku is the only game that is a number-based puzzle. In Sudoku, grids must be filled in with numbers from 1-9 with no repeats in each horizontal or vertical row. Requiring a lot of trial-and-error, or mind-numbing mathematical mastery, this game is not exactly beginner-friendly, and therefore scores 2 on Ease for being hard to pick up. This rating is given under the assumption that players do not engage the ‘Auto Candidate Mode’, which is a function that can help players deduce the correct answer. To be fair, Sudoku does allow you to choose between ‘Easy’, ‘Medium’ and ‘Hard’ modes, thus this rating is solely from the point of view of a first time player with little to no experience.
This is not to say that Sudoku does not have an audience or a fanbase, it is simply because most players do not go to NYT Games just for Sudoku since there are many other curated platforms for the game, earning the game a 1 on Popularity. Commitment to completing a Sudoku takes a long time, and is not ideal for those wanting to play a quick game as a fun mental exercise, thus it scores a 1 for Fun. Simply put, NYT Games is not known for Sudoku for a good reason. Apologies to all Sudoku lovers.
7th place: Tiles
Marketed as the relaxing, zen game in NYT’s offerings, it certainly stands out from the selection of games by being the one that’s virtually impossible to really lose, provided full-colour sight and a sufficiently clear screen. In Tiles, you match similar images, the eponymous tiles, and try to clear all the tiles one after the other in ‘combos’. It’s the sit-back-and-relax alternative to the fiercely intellectual nature of the other games. Foo Zee Yann (25A01B) agrees, playing it occasionally to relax after doing the other, more intensive, games.
This game, however, feels underwhelming for players who like NYT Games precisely because of the thinking required. It sticks out as a sore thumb in the Games catalogue, and therefore scores 1 for being far too easy (at least when benchmarked against other NYT Games). It scores a 3 on Fun for being enjoyable enough when played as a lulling pastime, but not exactly hitting the mark when you just need that kick that NYT Games generally offer. It also rarely ever shows up in players’ lists of frequently played games, thoroughly overshadowed by the ones later on this list, earning it a 2 on Popularity.
6th place: Letter Boxed
Letter Boxed has quite a self-explanatory name: You create words using letters in a box. The aim of the game is to use all the letters to form words in minimal tries, but the catch is that you cannot select letters on the same side of the box to form the word, and the next word must start with the last letter of the first word. The concept is relatively simple and beginners can grasp the concept easily as the game design is quite intuitive, earning is a solid 4 for Ease.
This game does have that NYT Games characteristic of challenging your mind to think out of the box (but I guess in this case, within the box) to find words that just fit the bill. The action of dragging lines to connect letters to each other does enhance the game experience and acts as a good visual aid for gameplay. However, the stakes of losing a Letter Boxed game are not as high—players can just restart the game when they see that they are approaching the limit—thus the element of challenge is lacking compared to the other games, lowering the Fun score to a 3.
Despite the game’s Ease and Fun levels being relatively high, it is not the most popular game. Unlike the other games in this ranking, it is often overlooked and barely has a following—perhaps due to the fact that there are other more popular games in this list—thus it scores a low score of 1 on Popularity.
5th place: Spelling Bee
With its distinctive hexagonal boxes for letters, Spelling Bee challenges you to spell as many words as possible from seven given letters, with every word having to contain the letter in the yellow centre hexagon. The game’s design, mimicking a honeycomb, certainly lives up to its creative name, one of the plus points of this popular game.
The Spelling Bee was, arguably, the foundation stone of what is now NYT Games, first introduced in print in 2014. New Spelling Bee puzzles are released daily at 3 p.m. SGT, giving players a chance to find as many words as possible, and even ‘Pangrams’, which is when a word uses all the letters available in the hexagonal boxes. Each puzzle has at least one Pangram, and can sometimes have up to four or five, depending on the selection of letters available.
Players can then ‘level up’ with ranks including Good Start, Solid, and Great, up till the highest tier, Genius. Score requirements for each rank are scaled based on the maximum possible score that that day’s puzzle allows for. Hints are available for players who are stuck in the Spelling Bee Forum, as well as information like how many Pangrams players can look for, which bumps our Ease rating for this game to a respectable 4.
However, one major drawback to the Spelling Bee format is its paywall—players without a subscription can only play up to the Solid rank before they are stopped from finding more words, having to subscribe to The New York Times to continue. This hurts the fun factor of Spelling Bee, since unsubscribed players are only able to find a few words, or are forced to find certain words like longer words or that puzzle’s Pangrams, which drops its Fun rating to a low 2.
Yet, Spelling Bee remains extremely popular as one of the original NYT Games and having a relatively simple-to-understand game format, giving its perfect 5 rating for Popularity.
4th place: Connections
As one of the newer NYT Games added to the ensemble roughly one year ago, Connections has proven to be one of the most popular games and has truly connected players all over the world. The premise of Connections is simple: Group four words that have the same theme or a common thread. The different groups vary in how difficult it is to find the connection, with yellow, green, blue and purple categories, with yellow being the easiest and purple being the hardest.
One slight issue with Connections is the fact that the difficulty level fluctuates greatly between each day. You either can or cannot solve it—there is simply no in between. On a good day, you might get a set of words that is just the right balance of challenge and effortlessness. On a bad day, well, let’s just say:
Heh. The difficulty of Connections truly is at two ends of the spectrum, thus it scores a 3 for Ease.
In a similar vein, the unpredictable challenge that Connections provides is what makes it so enjoyable. Another feature of the game is that players can only make four mistakes before the game reveals the answers, thus there is a sense of slight pressure to make each guess count. Even if people often groan at how absurd some of the answers are—we are quite confident that most people now know what homophones are because of Connections—we cannot deny that it is very entertaining and scores a 4 for Fun.
Given the game’s creative and often ludicrous answers, it is not surprising that Connections has garnered a lot of attention. Connections is extremely well-known and earns the full marks of 5 for Popularity.
3rd place: The Mini
The Mini Crossword is a bite-sized version of the traditional Crossword puzzle, offering the game in a 5×5 grid format, expanding to 7×7 on Saturdays. Releasing at 10 a.m. SGT on Monday to Saturday and 6 a.m. on Sunday, players solve for words using clues, much like a regular Crossword puzzle. Chin Wei Han (25A01B) appreciates this, saying that the Mini releasing later than most of the other games (which release at midnight) gives players something to do after the midnight-release games are exhausted.
The Mini clues, however, aren’t easy to solve—clues often incorporate cheeky wordplay, subtle hinting, or obscure facts. However, due to its size, each letter can typically be solved with two different clues (i.e. in two different directions), which makes this game doable even when clues are tough, plotting this game’s Ease rating at a 4. However, clues do sometimes tend to be America-centric (as with many other NYT Games, with The New York Times being an American publication), which occasionally makes it harder to solve for those not in the know.
The Mini also has a competitive aspect not found in other NYT Games—timing. In the Mini, players race against the clock to complete the puzzle in the fastest possible time, since the only comparable metric that players can differentiate themselves from other players with is the time spent on filling in the boxes. Rafflesians often share their Mini timings around, with some experienced players completing the puzzle in a flash, sometimes clocking in times under thirty seconds. This shareability gives the Mini a popularity edge and thrill component, setting both the Fun and Popularity ratings at a 4.
2nd place: Strands
Strands is a game in which you find hidden words in a 6×8 array of letters to find the larger theme. Players find theme words and a ‘Spangram’, which is when the word spans from one side to the other end of the game board. As a beginner, Strands might be hard to understand at first. After all, players are only given one vague overarching phrase to guide them to the answer. Fortunately, after three non-themed words are found, players get to use hints to bring them closer to victory. Despite its somewhat steep learning curve, it earns a 4 for Ease, since you can almost always make some progress with the hints provided.
The joy of Strands includes the good design and experience of linking the words together.
“It’s like Crossword but better.”
Nat Loh (25A01B)
Unlike Crossword, words in Strands can be connected not just vertically and horizontally, but also diagonally and sometimes even backwards. Unlike the hit British boy band, the words rarely go in one direction, so players get to unleash their creativity in visualising the answers.
Additionally, the hints not only help with the difficulty level, but also give the game momentum when you are stuck. Players are thus able to complete the game regardless of proficiency. The shareable format of the game is also a plus and earns Strands a 4 for Fun. With Strands being the newest addition to the NYT Games app, it is quite popular and many players are keen to try it out, putting it at a 5 for Popularity.
1st place: Wordle
Wordle, the crown jewel of NYT Games, and rightly so, the champion of our rankings. Created by online puzzle legend Josh Wardle whose other projects include the likes of Reddit collaborative-art-cum-social-experiment r/place, Wordle attained virality even before The New York Times acquired it in 2022 and made it part of NYT Games. It was played extensively during the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to prove its longevity now.
It asks players to guess a five-letter word in six tries, with each try giving new information about the letters in the correct answer and their positions through green and yellow squares, which denote the correct letter in the right place and a correct letter in the wrong place respectively. Given the limitations in complexity of 5-letter words, and discretion from the NYT Games editorial team to not include excessively esoteric words, the puzzle is generally doable. However, some days, players can get caught off-guard by snares such as double letters or words that rarely get used in our standard vernacular. This puts the Ease rating for Wordle at a 4.
Wordle also has an extremely shareable format, where players can share their entirely unique results through an automatically generated series of grey, yellow, and green square emojis which represent their game results for that day’s puzzle. These can be shared to friends, which is what skyrocketed it to game-stardom in the first place.
The game also featured in every one of our interviewees’ lists of what NYT Games they play, with Wei Han mentioning that he began playing the game in 2021 when it first came out. The excitement of trying to guess the word in the fewest possible tries and testing of vocabulary (albeit limited to five-letter words) puts the Fun rating at a 4, and its impressively consistent vogue places it at a 5 on Popularity.
Conclusion
One can argue that the NYT Games is no longer merely a form of entertainment, but a part of our school culture. In fact, in the process of writing this article, we were vindicated in seeing friends play the games we were writing about in front of our very eyes. Our rankings may be disagreeable here and there, but irrespective of where your favourite game places on our list, these games undeniably add a little kick and excitement to our days. If you’ve never played NYT Games before, we hope our list can give you an idea of what games to play, and we hope you find your new addiction– sorry, we mean pastime!