The Word Finder Blog!

Tiles plays out on a grid of squares. Each square holds a small design built from layered elements such as a shape, a color, and a background pattern. Times art director Sam Von Ehre...

NYT Crossplay launched 21 January 2026. It’s the New York Times’ first 2-player word game. Four months in, the shape of it is clear. Crossplay borrows Scrabble’s frame, the 15×15 board and the 100-tile bag, then changes what happens on top of it: different tile values, a stricter dictionary, an end-game rule built to cancel first-player advantage, and a built-in AI coach (Cro...

Word Chums has been on the App Store since 2012, which makes it one of the longer-running word games on mobile. It rarely gets the press that Wordle or the New York Times games attract, but it has held a loyal audience of daily players for well over a decade. The backstory is more interesting than the quiet profile suggests. The studio behind it was founded by one of the peop...

Stackdown has been growing in popularity, and we’ve noticed. The game launched in mid-March 2025 from Waffle Studio, the small UK-based team behind Puzzlist and the original Waffle word game. It hasn’t had the marketing budget of Wordle or the New York Times Games halo. But we’ve taken note of the steadily growing audience of players who solve it every morning before open...

Editor, The Word Finder

Naomi Bruwer

LinkedIn just released Wend, their newest daily puzzle, and it’s a meaningful return to form. After a stretch of logic-focused additions to their games lineup (Queens, Tango, Patches), LinkedIn has come back to letters. Wend is a word ga...