Kim is a game player and crossword puzzler…and sudokoer. All but crosswords and sudoko she does on her phone. She is very religious about it all and the only other thing that occupies her as much is keeping up with the various news feeds she reads. She focuses mostly on Substack, Apple News and the New York Times (NYT) for news and despite the fact that I subscribe to the NYT, the Washington Post (WAPO), the Financial Times (FT) and the Economist…and I get a lot through LinkedIn as well…she almost always scoops me with late breaking news. I think part of that is that she is on her phone more than I am, but I suspect her Apple News feed is the real early warning system for her. Mine is absolutely the FT, which alerts me to almost every major news event immediately on a global basis. My point is that we all have our personalized news feeds and phone watching habits these days and hers are centered on breaking news of a very general sort and games and puzzles.
Her favorite puzzles are the the ubiquitous Wordle, Connections, NYT Crossword, Mini, Midi, Strands and Pips. They are all very popular, but Wordle is still the most-played daily word game ever made. According to New York Times figures, Wordle was played 5.3 billion times in 2024, up about 10% from 4.8 billion in 2023. For comparison, Connections had 3.3 billion plays and Strands 1.3 billion. All NYT Games puzzles combined were played about 11 billion times that year. The NYT doesn’t publish daily player counts, and third-party estimates vary widely. One analytics firm put 2025 at about 4 million daily players and nearly 11 million monthly, with usage rising through the year. Other estimates run as high as 10–12 million daily. Either way, it isn’t fading the way viral games usually do. Its rise was remarkable, with only about 90 daily players in November 2021, over 300,000 by January 2022, and millions soon after. The Times bought it in early 2022, and it’s now the anchor that draws people into its paid games subscription. Who says publishing is dead (or as Trump always says when NYT writes something about him he doesn’t like…”the failing New York Times”).
In fact the Times is doing very well. It reported third-quarter 2026 results yesterday with revenue at $768.5 million, up 9.7% year over year, operating profit up 16.4% to $121.9 million, and adjusted operating profit up 13.9% to $149.6 million. Diluted EPS was $0.60, up from $0.50. In terms of subscribers there were about 420,000 net digital additions in the quarter, for 13.76 million total. That’s 1.46 million more digital-only subscribers than a year ago, putting the 15-million-by-2027 goal it established for itself within reach. And guess what…Games helped a lot, though indirectly. The Times doesn’t report Games revenue separately. Games is part of the “bundle” (news, Games, Cooking, The Athletic, Wirecutter), and that bundle is the engine of growth. Last year the company said bundle sales helped offset a decline in news-only subscriptions. Games also works as a daily habit with Wordle alone drawing over 5 billion plays in 2024, and free players becoming a funnel toward paid subscriptions, which raises retention and revenue per user. The broader story is that the Times has turned from a newspaper into a subscription lifestyle business, and Games is one of the stickiest reasons people stay. Leave it to Kim to be at the leading edge of a lifestyle trend.
I am much less a game player for some reason…probably because I dedicate so much time to doing exactly this…writing. And then there is MapTap. Kim introduced me to MapTap two months ago and I am thoroughly addicted to it. In the 58 days I have been using it I have not missed a day. MapTap is a free daily geography game, and it’s become one of 2026’s breakout Wordle alternatives. Each day you get five places to find, usually cities and sometimes historic sites like battlefields, all tied to events that happened on that date in history. You tap where you think each one is on a rotatable 3D globe with no country borders drawn. The closer your tap, the higher your score, out of 1,000. Be careful…the first three have a 100 point value each, the third and fourth have a 200 point value and the fifth has a three hundred point value. You can be doing great and screw yourself up in the last few taps. Each answer comes with a short history lesson, which has a really interesting set of fun facts… and, like most of these games, which are becoming social media phenoms, you can share your score with friends. It’s played in a browser at maptap.gg or as an app. The daily game is free with no ads. The daily five-place puzzle is free for everyone, and the company promises no ads in it anywhere, ever. That keeps the daily habit, and the viral score-sharing, as frictionless as possible. An optional MapTap+ subscription ($2.99/month or $14.99/year) adds finer zoom, past puzzles, private groups, and practice modes. Its growth has been striking. It’s the same playbook Wordle used before the NYT bought it… build a large free daily audience, then convert a small share of devoted players into paying subscribers. The economics work because costs are low. Creator John Donham had the idea in 2008 but didn’t build it until 2023. It’s a small operation. Donham started it as a labor of love, so even a modest conversion rate across 2 million-plus players could produce meaningful revenue. About 3,000 people played last year; today more than 2 million do. TechCrunch and NPR have both featured it. Do you think NYT is likely going to buy MapTap? I’m betting they will and add it to their “bundle” soon.
I currently share with Kim and my neighborhood pal Joe, who is a nuclear fusion scientist and entrepreneur (seriously…I love saying I have a nuclear fusion scientist friend). I do my daily MapTap at 2-4am every morning. Yes, that’s not a typo, I always wake up and go into the bathroom, as much to stretch my muscles and joints as to pee, but I need to be there a while for my aches and pains, so I do MapTap even though all sleep health logic suggests I shouldn’t. What can I say…it gets me through the night. Geography and history are sort of my jam, so I like to think it soothes the wild breast and beast within me.