NYT Games: Word Games & Sudoku Game Reviews

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Tons of fun; nav is good, not great. Most importantly: Nothing's my I'm about to say should impact your purchasing decision. If you like doing crosswords and you're okay with buying add-ons (either puzzle collections or the NYT puzzle subscription) you should pick this up. The navigation is more than good enough. I, however, will quibble. It's nice to move quickly from one clue to the next with the arrows provided, but there are a few more common navigations that I wish the app provided directly: - Better navigation within the local grid. The words directly adjacent to each other in a cluster aren't always the next/previous ones numerically. - Better "non-manipulating" navigation within the word. Sometimes I misclick the square I want, and would like to adjust one or two squares left/right/up/down, but one can only go backward destructively (by deleting letters) and forward by entering letters into the box. One affordance that would address both problems is a set of four-arrow "cursor keys" that would move the cursor up/down/left/right without modifying the contents of the box under the cursor. I doubt that's the only solution, however. Anyway, great content for crossword fans, my navigation quibbles notwithstanding. - going back and forth within the

Reluctantly abandoned paper. During COVID I was in lockdown away from my home. I couldn’t get daily delivery of The NY Times and so grudgingly switched, I hoped (as we all did in the spring of 2020) for only a few weeks. Weeks stretched to months. Eventually, I returned home but by then had liked the convenience of the iPad for the puzzle. I was only using the paper edition for two things - the crossword and as an accelerant to start fires in the fireplace and bbq. I continue to miss it for the latter use. My one beef with the digital puzzle is that with the paper version, I deemed a puzzle solved when I had filled in all the boxes (yes, with one letter each, not like Calvin in the immortal “yellow-bellied sapsucker” cartoon.) The digital version only delivers the happy music if all the squares are filled in CORRECTLY.

Rebus frustration. The only reason I’m not giving the app 5 stars is because of rebus puzzles like today’s (3/7/19 - STICK EM UP theme). One example answer was the movie Hang ‘Em High. When I entered “EM” as a rebus in this answer, and in the answers to all the other theme clues, I got the pop-up at the end telling me I needed to make corrections. When I changed them all to just “E,” I won the puzzle. This seems to happen every time I work a rebus puzzle. I guess I don’t understand what the rebus button is for if I can’t use it when I think I need to. I’ve searched the app’s help feature and the internet for instructions, but haven’t gotten anywhere. I think that should be explained more thoroughly in the help section. Otherwise, I can’t get enough of this app!

Great app, but version 2.14 is buggy. Love the app and my subscription to the online crossword. Am having lots of problems with version 2.14 on the iPad though - it keeps failing to accept input from my Bluetooth keyboard (Anker folio cover) while at the same time all other apps on my iPad keep working fine with it. And then at the same time it won't even bring up the on-screen keyboard when I turn off Bluetooth. Have to restart the program, more than once sometimes, to get it to work again. Have tried deleting and re-installing the app from the store. No joy. Sure wish I had kept a cache of the previous version... Update: it fails in a similar way on my iPhone - the keyboard just disappears and you have to kill and restart the app to get it to reappear. I don't use any Bluetooth keyboard on my phone so this seems that all of this might be a case of the app just forgetting at times to reactivate the keyboard when it's needed. Annoying bug.

Good app; wish I could access all games. Good app that is best for crossword (which I understand is the primary purpose of said app). I play the Bee a lot and find small glitches. There’s a slight delay in syncing across devices. I usually have to close and re open the app for the bee to reset for the new game the next day. Regarding crosswords, functionality works great. My biggest critique is that when clicking the info button, the app will re route to an in-app page of information and will also re route to a browser page outside of the app. When I go switch back to the app, sometimes for some reason I can’t get back to the game because the game app isn’t built for browsing the nyt app. Lastly, I wish the crossword app would contain all the games instead of just the crossword and the Bee. I have a separate game account from my digital subscription so I have to log out of the main nyt app app when I want to access other games. The games are buried in the main digital app and it’s cumbersome to find. It would be easier if they were accessible separately.

A review, by me.. Because of this app I finish the nyt crossword every day, and I save enough money on newspapers to pay my phone bill. I can also do the puzzle at 4 am or while I’m “in the office” so yeah it’s basically why I have a smartphone. I quit social media. I consider this app to be quality screen time. I did the puzzle in ink before I got this app, and now it’s just frustrating talking to people who are still hung up on that. The nyt crossword is a miracle of our culture. If more people enjoyed it the world would be a better place. The fact that I have access to years of archived puzzles AND the daily fresh one is both awesome & somehow liberating, because I can do as much as I want, but I will probably never solve them all in my lifetime & that’s ok!

Other puzzles?. I have a subscription to the crosswords at half price due to subscribing to the digital NYTimes as well. I complete the crosswords solely through the app on my phone. I wish the app would also incorporate the other puzzles the NYTimes provides, like the Spelling Bee, Soduku, Set, acrostics, bonus crosswords, and other puzzles. These can be accessed through the help menu in the crosswords app, but I wish they could have their own apps or be accessed on the main page of the crossword app. If only the app could be set to display the main puzzle page (puzzle homepage) of the NYTimes, it would be very easy to access all the available puzzles through the app. As it is, you need to go to the help menu, click on one of the additional puzzle links, and get to the homepage through the menu bar of the puzzle. It’s a pain, and it doesn’t need to be. Please, NYTimes, provide easy access to the puzzle homepage on the Play page! Alternatively, give the app a new tab just for accessing other puzzles. It would make the app so much better!

Free trial ended and I lost packs. Revised... Great puzzles and easy to use app. In-app puzzle packs are about $2-$4 for 15-30 puzzles. I had just purchased two packs and then apparently my Free Trial ended two days later without any warning and I lost access to the packs I had just paid for unless I want to pay another $7/ month or $40/year. Some obvious countdown, e.g., “You have two days left in your free trial”, would have been polite. I might have subscribed or at least not made the next purchase. Instead, I’m just annoyed and out a few bucks. I expect better of NYT. UPDATE: Thanks to developer response, I recovered my purchase. (Fix was not obvious, though.) Individual packs are great for me now; I may subscribe someday when I’m confident that I can play frequently for a long period. Thanks NYT!

great puzzles, mediocre app. I’ve been subscribed to the NYT crossword for several years now and the app experience has barely changed. Given the amount of available data, there’s a huge opportunity for interesting player stats but there’s nearly nothing available - no way to track your improvement over time, no way to access any trends, no access to comparative data older than the last week, etc. The biggest issue for me is the homepage: a full row advertising “other games” that is just one other game (spelling bee, which i’m not interested in but can’t dismiss), THREE different links to the same “archives” page (four if you count the one in the menu) but no list of all the puzzles you’ve worked on (so: good luck finding one you’ve not finished if you’ve been picking from the archives and are mysteriously stuck at 99.9 completion percentage- you’ll have to just page back, one month at a time for multiple years), leaderboards that are only applicable for the mini, and of course, plentiful in-app purchase opportunities. Don’t get me wrong, I love the crossword, but the app feels essentially like abandonware.

Buggy. The puzzles are of course great, but twice now my streaks have been interrupted when I completed a puzzle in time, but was not connected to the Internet. Yesterday I finished the Saturday puzzle, was greeted with the gold "Congratulations!" screen, and then moved on. This morning it told me I had a zero day streak, and when I looked at the puzzle, the last three squares were blank! I was in an area of spotty connectivity when I finished the puzzle, and did not open the app again until this morning. The other time this happened was when I was on an overnight flight and finished while in airplane mode. The only thing I can imagine is that the app is calling home pretty frequently to send data back to NYT. The fact that iPhone says the app's cellular data usage is an absurd 1.1GB suggests it may be sending all kinds of other info besides where I am in the puzzle. That is NOT REASONABLE.

App getting worse. Used to be a good app. Now the keyboard disappears when leaving a puzzle. Complete puzzles do not sync across other platforms (e.g. iPad to iPhone). I’ve completed daily puzzles this week, but if you go into the recent screen only one from this week appears when in actuality I complete at least one per day. I’ve contacted customer service several times by email and phone. I usually do not get an answer by email but when I do they say they’re working on it. Some of this has been going on since May. I expected this app to work better since it came from the Times. Maybe I’m expecting too much? 9/7/18 update - key board issue fixed and that app seems to work better. It still doesn’t sync across platforms, but I can live with that issue since it’s rare that I do crosswords on my phone. Thanks NYTimes for the response.

NYT Crossword. I enjoy this a lot and it’s worth the money but there are a few irritating bugs. I have done thousands of the archived puzzles in the app, most of them. But the app sometimes forgets which puzzles I’ve done. Also the hints feature which works well on my iPad is unreliable on my iPhone. I like the timing feature and I’ve watched my times gradually improve as I do more puzzles. I also like the streaks tracking. There are enough hints and aids that novices can solve the puzzles and know they’ve done so correctly. NYT obviously put money into their puzzle column and it shows in the app. It’s the start of every day for me. I’d much rather do the puzzles in the app than on paper which speaks well for their programming.

Marriage Compact!. Before we subscribed to the NYT Crossword, my husband and I only had the paper version delivered every day. Back then, our deal was that he took the Arts section with him on his commute to work— seemed fair— and I had to wait for the weekend when we did Saturday and Sunday together in ink. Once covid hit, I added the puzzle to our NYT subscription so that he could do the puzzle online and I would do it on paper. It has been a dramatic improvement in our morning routines! I must report, however, that we still do Saturdays together, on paper, but we part ways on Sunday so we each get a bite at the big apple. Thank you for providing this and the other great games you keep adding: we love Wordle, Letterboxed, Spelling Bee, and Tiles, too!

Good UI, missing puzzles. I download this app once in a while to see if they’ve incorporated any more of their games besides spelling bee and crosswords. Would like to see sudoku, vertex, and now the chess game on it. Until then, I prefer to print the crosswords and do the other games in a browser. That said… The crosswords alone make the subscription worth the price if you’re a fan of the genre. I’ve used Crossword Classics for years and it’s a great app (superior to this one in terms of user experience) but there’s something about the NYT puzzles that gives them an edge over most others. As for the user experience, it’s pretty good. There are a couple of little things I can’t help comparing to the other app: the annoying pop up that comes when you finish a puzzle but not correctly, the ability to jump to a referenced clue, an option to put the controls along the bottom, and just showing the current time. But in general, it’s easy to navigate and as I said, the puzzles are great.

Bug. Generally works OK but I noticed a bug. Twice now when I've completed a puzzle correctly the app refuses to accept it as so. Then the next day when I open it to try to find the error it suddenly accepts it. Then tells me that since I didn't do it 24 hours that my streak is over. Some people do the whole week's puzzles on the weekend. Not fair to them. The whole streak thing is between solver and the puzzle. It's not like someone wins a prize for streaks. Lighten up! When I was in Europe I solved a puzzle offline because no network access. Three days later I noticed that my streak had ended. Looked back to discover that the puzzle I had solved was half empty and not counted as completed. So to be fair the complete time has to be sensitive to time zones.

I need a daily crossword!. I cannot survive without a daily New York Times Crossword! In fact, if I miss even one day, I, myself become very cross! I’ve been doing a crossword puzzle every day of my life since I commuted, by subway, to high school in New York in 1959. If I miss a day I feel as if something is very wrong. The larger Sunday puzzle is a romp. Having a theme helps. Monday is a breeze. Thursday’s is often the week’s most challenging for me. Lately, I have found Saturday’s to be difficult as well. I am very far behind in knowledge of popular culture since retiring from the daily grind of regular employment and residing in New York City. The clues in that area (popular culture) are sometimes way beyond me! But, I know all the archaic words and culture very well!

not working. again!. this app though simplistic, is good enough. i would probably give it a 3, they could do way better. also, considering there are so few letters, it would be faster and more entertaining to be able to swipe across letters to “type” words. and instead of deleting when i submit a word, leave the rejected word with the error message in place so i know what was wrong with the word. instead, add a “clear” button so i can clear it myself. some words are kind of ridiculous, and some very obvious valid words are missing. i should not have to email the New York Times which words are missing, they should have a dictionary or two… am I wrong? lately, for more than the past week, i just get a yellow screen and the starburst which insinuates loading. if i did not pay for the app, i could not say anything, but i do. and it is an incredibly expensive subscription considering you are expected to pay forever. if the writer is on vacation, either set up some in advance, have backups, or extend memberships. this is not the first time spelling bee goes on break with no notice and no info as to when it will be back. reevaluating my renewal.

Addicting in a good way. I started doing the NYT crossword a couple years ago (in my 50’s) and while I initially found it difficult and frustrating, I slowly advanced through the week, just as the experts said. The app makes solving more fun and extremely portable, and has been a lifesaver during Covid when I’ve needed diversions from the ever-present bad news. The app is well designed and fun to use. My only “complaint” is the color coding of results. Yellow means you’re on a streak. Blue means you’ve solved it but not on the day of publication OR you needed help. I wish there was a finer gradation of results. To me, there’s a big difference between solving a Thursday puzzle but on a Friday vs having to have the app “reveal” answers that I couldn’t get on my own. For my own interest, I’d like to look back and see how my solving has progressed over months. When they’re all blue, I can’t tell if I really solved the puzzle on my own or not. I don’t really care if I did it in the alloted 24 hour window. Other than that, it’s a winner.

Recent Update. Update 1.1: Why are all the 2 word descriptors of the non crossword games all alliterations except Wordle and Connections? Update: Thank you for adding the “reveal answers” button for the previous day’s Spelling Bee. I like that I now have the option to play past games or see what words I missed. Please keep this feature! 🙏🙏 Original review: Hi NYT games! I love your app, but rated 1 star so you would read my feedback. Your most recent update has dampened the joy of the Spelling Bee game. I have been playing this game for years, and one of the best parts of this game was that you only had 24 hours to solve the puzzle. After that, you could review the previous day’s puzzle to see what words you missed. I learned a lot of words that way and it has helped me improve at the game. It also prevented me from endlessly playing spelling bee. Your new feature takes away the time limit on the puzzle and also means that you can’t see the previous day’s answers. I hope you will consider making this new update optional, or let users be on the app in “old mode” where we can choose to keep the game as a 24 hour puzzle. Thank you, Sophie

No puzzling over why this app rules.. I start every morning with tea and the NYT crossword — delivered seamlessly to my phone. It wakes my brain up to solve these witty and sometimes challenging clues. With it comes an archive of past puzzles, many of which have made waiting in lines, or for the oil change (thanks but no thanks to your TV tuned to Fox) or even being put on hold by a robot actually fun. It gives you stats about your solve time and let’s you compete against friends who use it (though I don’t know anyone personally who does). There is also the commentary, which I try not to read until after I’ve completed the puzzle because it does have spoilers, but is immensely enjoyable to read. In short, before I plunge into a day filled with scary news, deadlines and political rancor I spend some times with the Times puzzle. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Love the app - would like a remote collaboration feature. My wife and I love to solve the NYT crossword together each and every weekend night using this app. However, I travel during the week and I wish there was a remote collaboration feature where we can solve together when she is home and I am in my hotel room. I want to be able to see what she is typing (real-time) and be able to also type at the same time. (Note, we usually have a FaceTime call going while we are solving separately now--but the experience is not the same as when we are sitting next to each other). The current version of the app allows us to work separately, and then it occasionally, but unexpectedly, synchs--with her typing replacing mine and vice-versa. If you cannot support real-time collaboration (I think you can), can you at least add a manual synch control so we can both choose when to merge the other's player's typing--possibly with color-coding so we can see the other's additions/changes?

Terrible start. As soon as I opened it I was asked to make an account. Why would I make an account?? I came here to play wordle, nothing else. Then it tells me I have 7 days left to play it… terrible. Personally I planned to play this every so often when I have downtime and it expiring so quickly is terrible. I don’t care what remains free, it’s a bad user experience to have the impression that what I came here to do is now going to cost me money, especially for something so simple. It’s honestly ridiculous to charge money for anything in this game, from what I’ve even seen. Also I opened the app and the home page didn’t load at all. It made no sense at first but once I reloaded it worked. With that, it makes me not want to pay, even more. If I have to constantly restart the app that I’m paying for that’s not a good look. I’m going to delete this and play on a website instead. This is just my impression in 1 minute and it may be harsh but I have played wordle before on a different app or something and it wasn’t like this.

Ruining My Life. I wake up sometimes too earlier to seek some peace and quiet before my kids wake up and totally ruin everything. I sneak downstairs, turn on my coffee maker and I impatiently wait for it to finish. Sometimes I am too impatient to wait (ok most times) because I need to grab my blanket, hunker down with crossword app and just start already. On those days I stick my mug directly under the stream, making a wholly mess in the process but who cares! IT’S CROSSWORD TIME! MY TIME. And I know they release the next day at 10 PM but dude, who wants to do that? I like to savor my morning routine. But sometimes I can’t finish them and I go mad trying and so it’s ruining my life in the best possible way. If we ever need to cut back on our expenses, I’d give up shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant and haircuts before the NYT Crossword app.

Good, but plenty to improve. I am a daily player of this app. I feel like NYTimes did a great job with a simple interface that outcompetes, imho, doing crosswords on paper. I like how the puzzles are released. It is more important to have it work well than to have too many bells and whistles. For this I am grateful. However, as a heavy player, I find myself regularly frustrated by an unfulfilling game-play relative to gaming standards today. I would like to see more accomplishment possibilities. I like rewards, badges, rankings and levels. I enjoy the puzzle talk where I can see explanations and chatter about the puzzles but this is apparently not available when a puzzle ages out to archives. The paid packages are nothing special. I would pay extra for themed puzzles that actually stick to enjoyable themes. I would like the ability to leave and see ratings for puzzles! Someday, maybe even a social aspect to the app could be attempted. I love the puzzles. I wish I was better at them! Thank you NYTimes.

Bug killed my streak. I completed the Monday puzzle last week to continue my streak, got the gold treatment, and then cleared the puzzle for my less-adept wife to try her hand. But she didn’t have time to get to it and the app terminated my 500+ day streak, even though the puzzle *had* been completed in time. That simply shouldn’t happen and is very disappointing. I can just hear Will say, “If your wife wants to play, she should get her own subscription,” but that’s not going to happen until she takes more interest and gets a whole lot better. NYT should be more welcoming and more responsive, considering the amount of revenue. (Why aren’t all the old solutions retrievable within the app instead of dead links—do you really want people reading old Rex Parker commentary? ;-) Why can’t users pull up the puzzles that were their personal best times for each day of the week?)

Gone downhill. The App used to work great but recent upgrades have degraded it to where the software team are clearly “Testing in the Field” with the latest software. This is not good for something as professional as the NYT App. I suspect (as a software manager of old) that they are getting the platform ready for, perhaps, Wordle integration but as of right now (mid 2022) their is no viable record of your results in either Spelling Bee or Crosswords. Can you imagine that the App cannot distinguish between this week or last week and that you got all 66 words out of 65 possible? The loss of crossword average times is saddest. Ads for more NYT services have now started appearing in the paid App. You know, the one you buy so you don’t get ads! In conclusion let me just say, I have to wonder if I want to continue paying for something that is this amateurish!

Great for the Puzzles ... Not for Stats. This has been a daily part of my life for many years and in almost every way is an excellent adaptation of the print version. My wife and I have completed over 2500 puzzles using the app. Its ability to track streaks and keep timing stats is sure to disappoint people who care about those features but aren’t willing to work around the poor implementation of the app’s ability to work across multiple devices and platforms. It can also be awkward when print versions of the puzzle have a gimmick that can’t be easily executed using the app’s available features. Both the handling of puzzles when shared on multiple devices and poorly executed adaptation of gimmicky print puzzles have caused the app to improperly end long streaks. A real buzzkill but not a show-stopper for an otherwise addictive and well done app.

UI improvements still sorely needed. Fantastic for the crossword - although very recently I’ve noticed that all initial presses of the backspace key need to be done twice in order to take effect. Likely fouled by a recent update. 3 stars because it has been quite a long while now that we are still waiting for dark mode in the Spelling Bee. (No, turning down my whole system’s brightness is not an acceptable solution for this, as was advised in an email from the support staff many moons ago.) Also, glad to see Wordle rolled up into the app, but it falls short for iPad users because it cannot display in landscape mode. Therefore, it is still easier to do in Safari, which of course does accommodate landscape display. Easily this would be a 5-star app, but for these few significant shortcomings.

Casting to apple tv. We love using this with our apple tv. We run the app on my iphone and then airplay it to the apple tv. This gives us a lovely interface where everybody in the family can see all the clues for the crossword (a fantastic improvement over crowding around the same small phone screen). It’s a really a great feature which is literally the reason we got our apple tv. But lately we’ve been having trouble airplaying the app to our apple tv from my iphone 6s+. When we’ve been doing this, it doesn’t display in the nice fullscreen format, and instead it merely shows the narrow copy of what the phone screen looks like. Sometimes restarting stuff helps, but now we’re having consistent trouble with it (and what better day for family help than a Saturday?). Any insight would be great. [Love the app]

Spelling Bee issue. I play the Crossword a few times a week but mostly use the app for Spelling Bee, which I try to play every day. Overall it’s great, but I’ve noticed an issue where I’ll check answers the following day to find a word (or words) included among them that I know I tried the previous day and wasn’t given points for because it was “Not in word list.” For example, I tried to enter “woody” several times on the April 12, 2021 game but it told me it wasn’t on the list. This was odd because woody means covered in trees, but I just figured the game thought it was a proper pronoun and wouldn’t accept it. Fine. The next day it showed up among the game’s answer list. I’m guessing either answers are added throughout the day as the editor gets emails from players, or that the editor accidentally adds a space after a word when inputting the answers, or something, but either way, it’s frustrating to encounter at least once a week.

Worth every penny.. If you like crossword puzzles, you will not be disappointed in your purchase of the NYT app. The world’s best puzzles every day are there for your solving! Seriously, I’ve had this app for 5+ years, and in that time I've been told by many girlfriends that crosswords take priority over my relationships. And they were never wrong. These crosswords are there for me, ya know!? In a way that no human ever can be. Instead of trying to “fix” me, the NYT crossword puzzle app takes me as I am. All it wants is it’s boxes filled. It doesn’t want to talk about our days. It doesn’t mind that I’m messy and keep strange hours. It doesn’t mind when I come home from the bar with the smell of tequila and other women on my breath. It’s there for me, always, in sickness and in health, for better or worse, for richer or poorer.

Love the app, missing some functionality. In most ways, this app is wonderful. The NYT puzzle is the gold standard, so no complaints there. Text entry is usually quite smooth and consistent, especially compared to other crossword apps I’ve tried. Rebuses work well. There are a couple other varieties of puzzles besides your standard crosswords. However, there are a few components that I think are sorely missed. Why only have a mini leaderboard and not a daily puzzle leaderboard? I compete with my friends on a daily basis and we would greatly appreciate this. Additionally, it would be great to expand the functionality of the Stats screen to include minis. There are also a bunch of weirder stats that could be fun to include. Edit: since last August, my mini leaderboard has been broken. It now only shows a blank white page. Additionally, for the last few weeks my stats page has stopped showing my daily times. This app needs TLC.

App is fine, variety and acrostics will be gone soon, though. I’ve been a subscriber for years, and loved the crosswords, but over time I started getting bored of them and liking the weekly acrostic and occasional cryptic and diagramless crosswords that I could play on the NYT website with my Crossword subscription even better. They and the Spelling Bee became a bigger draw for me than the daily crossword. But I just saw that they are going to disappear on March 1. Those puzzles are going to be exclusively on print now. To say that I am disappointed is an understatement. The wobbly support (if you look at the reviews here, they have replied to one review and it’s for the wrong one!?) took one star away from the rating, and for taking away my favorite games just like that, that’s another star off. Maybe I’ll do some shopping around.

Don’t bother if you care about tracking your progress. This app is fine, until you want it to reliably track your progress. A couple of years ago, the clock froze while I was solving a puzzle, meaning that my record for a Tuesday is under two minutes. Thus, I never really know if I’ve managed to break a PR on Tuesdays. Multiple emails to NYT XWords went unanswered as I tried to figure out if there was a way to erase the bad data point. Then today, I open the app as usual. I am informed that my “trial subscription” is over (I have a fully paid subscription that renewed months ago). Meanwhile, it has erased the last several days of puzzles that I solved, meaning that my solving streak of almost 250 days is now broken thanks to the glitch brought about by the incompetence of the app developers. So if you just want to solve puzzles on occasion, go for it. If you actually want an app that doesn’t routinely wipe out your data, keep on looking.

NY Times online crossword puzzle app. For $2 or $3, you get access to the archive of the daily puzzle in addition to all the Monday through Sunday puzzles as they come out. A gold star is available for each new puzzle that you complete on the day of its issue. It’s an addictive feature that has kept me completing the puzzles each day now for the past two months and counting. Other collections of themed puzzles are available for nominal fees. The included archive alone looks to be enough to keep me occupied for several years to come, at least. These are fun puzzles to experiment with, since the technology allows for rapid, easy letter replacement. I frequently go with my gut on difficult and obscure answers, sometimes finding them surprisingly correct, sometimes transforming entire puzzle quadrants from one set of answers to a largely different set. The letter replacement feature makes this app a clear favorite over the old pen and paper technique. I use the app each day and highly recommend it.

Great app, but wish it included all games and more statistics. This app is great for doing the regular/mini daily crosswords and for the spelling bee! I do wish it also included the entire New York Times games collection, including the bonus/acrostic/variety crossword puzzles, Wordle, Tiles, Vertex, Sudoku, and Letter Boxed (which are currently only available through a web browser). Also, it would be great to be able to keep track of completions/streaks and statistics for daily puzzles other than the crosswords and Wordle! The ability to see which days’ crossword puzzles have been completed in the calendar archive, in addition to viewing streaks and other statistics, is super motivating — a similar feature for Spelling Bee (and the other daily puzzles) would be amazing! Thank you to everyone who works hard on this app and the puzzles that appear on it!

Stupid Hints, Stupid Answers. I went in with high hopes for a relaxing and challenging game but was quickly and immediately disappointed. the hints to the puzzles were so bad and the answers were even worse. The hints were barely hints at all and trying to find meaning in them was a riddle in and of itself. the answers were sometimes not even one word and it was impossible to tell if it was supposed to be one or two words because THERE WERE NO SPACES. to give you an example of an immensely disappointing one: A five letter word, hint: “Later!” not only does the clue give you no hint what so ever but the answer was “Imoff”. no space. I cant believe this is associated with an actual news paper. this was so disappointing. also just a heads up to whoever makes these but for people that actually text since the editors were obviously born in the 18th century, nbd stands for “no big deal” not “Don't worry about it”, that is abbreviated as dw. Maybe this was just targeted at a different demographic but this miss the mark big time and was amazingly frustrating, I would recommend it to nobody

A Mini Lover. I’ve been a crossword puzzle fan for years. The NYT crossword is legendary; if you can solve it, you’re a pro! I was excited about this app because of its “minis,” quick puzzles you can complete in minutes. You can get a bundle of 30 for $3 to $5. Each time I’d buy a bundle, a window appeared offering the opportunity to get a “subscription,” for $40. So, I thought this would include these mini bundles in the price. But when I purchased the subscription, I realized that I still have to pay for these bundles! WTH?! What a rip-off! It would help if they made it clear that all you’re buying is the puzzle that appears in their paper.😤 UPDATE: Now that the NYT Crossword Team has responded to my issue, and they’ve pointed me in the direction of hundreds of FREE Mini Puzzles, I am extremely happy with this app! It is SO much fun! I’ve alerted all my friends on FB to the enjoyment this app offers. And since most all of my friends are far more brainy, with much better vocabularies, and they possess quicker mental acuity than I do, I have no doubt they’ll be subscribing to this app. While it’s important for each of us to exercise our bodies, it’s equally as important to exercise our brains. And crosswords are a great way to do that. I highly recommend this app! (FYI, I use it on my iPhone 7.)

Advertising in a paid subscription app.. The app has recently added a advertisement bar at the bottom of the screen in the spelling bee game. It’s annoying, unnecessary, and it’s a betrayal from an application to which I pay a fee every month to use without the scourge of advertisements. The spelling bee game has now been ruined for me. I pay for apps so that I don’t have to deal with advertisements. Everytime I launch it now I have to tolerate its presence. To me, one of the appeals of this app has been the clean, serene, some would say stark, interface. This has now been tainted by this rude, greedy addition. There is a button to make the ad “go away”, but it doesn’t work properly. When I finally get so next-level annoyed by it that I deign to press the little “x” to disappear the ad, it registers as a positive selection and brings me to a full-screen ad asking me to buy the app for someone else. Boom, there goes my concentration. No. My patience is wearing thin. It’s just a matter of time before ads are expanded to the crossword page as well, so don’t think that if you don’t play the spelling bee game you wont be affected by this. Get rid of it before I just cancel my subscription and be done with it. There are a thousand other word games just waiting to be downloaded to my phone. This one is now in my suspect queue on the road to cancellation.

Extremely buggy and unreliable version—please respond and fix.. This is getting unacceptable. This is not a free app—I pay annually for this app and have done so for quite a few years now. Is there anyone making efforts to undo these bugs? I have attached a screen video of what happens to my phone when it crashes. I can now confidently say that it has to do with internet connection (specifically when I regain connection like when I’m on the subway). You will see that happens at around 16 seconds into the video. To add insult to injury, you will also notice that when I return to the app, I lose my most recent progress as well. At this point after making effects to reach out in the past, I ultimately feel that if I do not at the very least receive a prompt reply, I sadly cannot continue to support your app. Please take the necessary steps to fix this problem and treat your loyal customers with the respect they deserve. I will also be posting this as a review in the hopes that might inspire more action. Thank you.

Has advantages over paper version. Doing the NY Times Monday crossword has been one of the highlights of my week since college. Now I routinely make it to Wednesday, with the help of this awesome, but addictive app. I once put the rest of my life on hold during a seventeen day ‘streak’, but got a grip and now just do the ones I can finish and still get work done. Having the stats is neat, too. But perhaps the best part is having access to archive puzzles so I can go get a Monday puzzle from days of yore whenever the urge strikes (well, and I whenever I actually have time). Finally, when not streaking, the feature where you can struggle for a reasonable stretch and then give up and check the puzzle and find out which square is the problem is worth its weight in gold. Probably saves marriages, that feature...

Show the iPad some love!. Preface: I’ve been using the NYT crossword app (and have been a loyal subscriber) for years. I’ve given the iPad version a pass for too long now. We’ve had iPads of different sizes and resolutions for years now, why have the developers of this app neglected making any kind of updates that would keep graphics crisp and appropriately sized regardless of whether you’re using a 9.7”, 11” or 12.9” device? Properly implementing Apple’s frameworks wouldn’t just make for a better visual experience, it would allow for split-screen and slide-over multitasking. Why not show external keyboards some love? Maybe the release of the Magic Keyboard will spark a rethink at the NYT - but for years we’ve endured the app’s onscreen keyboard taking up half the available screen even when a physical one is connected. And about those keyboards: why do I have to wait a second or two between key-presses of the same letter in order for them to be properly represented? Try typing the word “between” or “presses” in the Crossword app without pulling your hair out. I dare you. I’m begging you: please give us proper external keyboard support!!! This kind of stuff is easy to overlook for a free application, but for one that I pay a not-insignificant sum for each and every year, I expect better.

Good puzzles and app, subscription terms are a bold-faced lie. I bought a subscription for the puzzles in the app, under the impression that the subscription works on the website as well for use on my MacBook. Where did I get that impression? Directly on the sign-up page in the app, where it states that this is possible. There is even a step-by-step guide on the NYT website on how to access your iTunes subscription by linking your account. When I did this, however, I discovered that it does not transfer any information at all to the web. I talked to a NYT customer service rep and was told that this is not possible, and the website just hasn’t been “updated” to remove the false information. So you pay 4 cents more a month for the iTunes subscription to get LESS access across your devices, and when you ask NYT about it, they tell you that it was never possible and claim that it’s Apple’s fault that the instructions it provides on its website are completely false. Needless to say, I will be getting a refund on my subscription and I doubt I will ever give it any more time or money. A real shame, as I love the daily puzzles and think the app has one of the better faces among the many crossword apps available. DO NOT SUBSCRIBE WITHIN THE APP IF YOU WANT TO USE THIS ON OTHER DEVICES.

Great, but can be improved. I have been using the app and doing the puzzles nearly every day since May 2017. It works great most of the time, but i have some complaints: 1. TWICE now I’ve encountered a glitch where I finish the puzzle and get the completion notification, but the timer continues running. This marks the puzzle as “incomplete” and ends my 500-day streak, putting me back at square one. Why even bother keeping up a streak if it can be yanked away from you at any moment?!? Is my perfect puzzle streak kind of a silly thing to be upset over? Maybe. Is this setback still absolutely, violently rage-inducing? YES. I KNOW it’s just a game though. I am a grown adult woman with a sane mind. I am ok. I am ok. I am ok. No, no, I am fine... 2. The friend/leaderboard feature is sooo lame. It only applies to the minis and doesn’t allow you to share your stats for the full size puzzles!!! Lame lame lame. 3. The app doesn’t allow you to access the other types of games and puzzles that you can find on the nyt website. I would love to be able to play spelling bee or do the acrostic from the app! All that said, this app has changed my life. Doing the puzzle every day brings me a peace and satisfaction that I can’t get anywhere else, and I plan to continue paying for it until my dying breath.

Doesn’t have all the games. I don’t know who is working as the UX designer or product designer at NYT but you should be fired. Not only is it impossible to navigate any of the apps they design but this specific app “NYT Games” doesn’t even have all the games they offer that I play regularly through the normal NYT site/app. And that app (the NYT App) has all EXCEPT Sudoku, which is in this app… Tiles, Letter Boxed, Vertex… all not in the NYT Games app but are games they have and ONLY offer through a subscription. What gives? I only want to switch to letter boxes from Spelling bee… and so in one app it says to use the games app to play the games! But only half of them! To access all of the games, you can go back to the normal app which is doing a perfectly good job giving access to the games. Like someone needs to be let go. That disorganization as well as the terrribly interaction and navigation patterns of the apps and NYT site itself is truly shocking for such a big company.

The best crosswords I can find!. My best guess is that anyone who regularly does crosswords has a love-hate relationship with them. There are words that get reused because they are convenient fillers. Puzzlers are expected to know some words in any European language (but not other languages). Puzzles often try gimmicks that only sort of work. No doubt crossword puzzles can be extremely frustrating. That’s why you need them to be written by professionals, who can give time to developing and editing a superior product. The New York Times has built a reputation for doing this for decades. The best thing to say about the app is that it does not get in the way o the experience. It isn’t particularly frustrating, and considering I find fault with most user interfaces, that’s saying a lot.

It’s good, with room for improvement. First off, I use this every day, and for it’s main use of filling out the daily crossword it’s great! Some of the extras need some polish, though. It occasionally forgets about puzzles I’ve already completed, and if I buy a pack of puzzles, complete some, and come back to them later, it forgets that I downloaded and finished them. I do like that it saves my progress across devices, though. Also, I have an iPad Pro 11”, and the app doesn’t extend all the way to the edge in landscape mode, which, as an iOS developer myself, is an odd bug; I didn’t realize that was possible. But overall, it’s a good app. If you love good crosswords, you should get this and subscribe. I definitely get my money’s worth out of it.

Great—with one small exception.. I love the app and use it all the time. The UI is easy to use and smooth, and being able to browse (and download) past puzzles means I never lack for activities. The one thing that keeps this app from a five-star review, for me, is that I use a hardware keyboard with my iPad, and there’s a bug that’s persisted in this app for several years now. When you type a repeated letter (for example to solve a clue with the word “book”), the second letter is not entered into the puzzle. The keystroke is just dropped somehow. You have to wait probably a good ½ second before you type the same letter again. This only happens with a hardware keyboard (in my case, the smart folio), not the software one. It’s a small issue in the scheme of things, but it’s just annoying enough that I can’t give a full five stars—especially since the bug has existed for so long. Hope the dev team will consider digging into this, even though it’s probably not a quick one to solve.

Unfair and illogical subscription policy. The app and the puzzles are awesome, but fair warning about the subscription policy. If you subscribe but don't do all the puzzles that are released during your subscription period, and then unsubscribe or don't renew, then you would think the app would still give you access to all the puzzles from during the period your subscription was active. That just seems fair and logical, since if you subscribed to the physical NYT for only a year or whatever, you could do the puzzles at whatever point you felt like it. However, it doesn't work this way. If you miss the puzzles, you're out of luck once your subscription runs out, even if you paid for a whole year and only did a few puzzles. In other words, the only way to get your entire money's worth is to do an average of one puzzle every single day for the entirety of your subscription period. This may seem fine for some people, but for those of us who want to just do the puzzles at leisure, just whenever we have time for them, a subscription is a terrible way to go.

Variety pack. NYT Games has a terrific range of word games that includes their stellar crossword, a matching game with lots of tile sets to keep things interesting, and sudoku. Some of the challenges have a visual component. It’s fun to try the daily puzzles and you can dig in to the archives or open-ended games if you want more. For players who like to compete, some of the games have different difficulty levels and/or keep stats on your performance; you can try to break your own record or share your scores to see how you stack up against other players. If you like a variety of word games, this app is well worth the add-on charge or as part of a package like all access digital.

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Lost all history & data. Have had this app on & off for a few years. I suddenly was logged out of the app, and upon logging back in found every single puzzle blank. Years of history of completed puzzles gone. And it’s not the first time. Since they’ve bought Wordle, my stats on that app have been reset multiple times, with NYT logging me out, and promising that if I log in, all my stats will show up. Not once has that happened. Seems they are prioritising their own data collection over user experience.

Good but needs work. Still no alignment with native dark mode, is one example of where the app falls short.

Gets the ol’ brain workin. Tricky at times for a non-USer, but can’t complain as it is the NY Times Crossword :) plenty of archives if you are up to date. Worth the subscription for the Thursday crosswords alone, not to mention the minis, wordle, sudoku etc. Do yourself a favour

So buggy, rarely works at all. Love the games, the app itself is horrible. It rarely loads a new day, I have to close it several times and then go to the archives to get new puzzles. Often freezes. Recently wouldn’t work at all so I deleted and redownloaded it and now (even though I am logged in) it’s lost a bunch of my progress and won’t let me access the subscription-only content, even though I have a subscription. Honestly going to give up and cancel. I’m on a recent v16 iOS, don’t think there’s any other workarounds I could try to make it work at this point.

UI needs work. Wordle has a dark theme, Spelling Bee has a light theme, Crosswords can be either but doesn’t follow the system setting… it’s just a mess. All puzzles and menu screens should be updated to follow the system light/dark theme

Won’t login. It logged me out of Wordle and even though I logged in successfully numerous times it still shows me as logged out. Can’t play with this app until this is fixed.

So worth. If you’re contemplating getting a subscription just do it, so worth

I play this so much. Please update this for iPad Pro screen sizes. It's the last app I use regularly that doesn't go to the edges. It would look so great going into the curved corners of the screen. You know it would Also command-tabbing into Messages and back to the crossword often causes the hardware keyboard to stop being able to enter text in the crossword. Not sure if this is a general Apple bug or specific to the crossword app Other than that it's pretty much perfect

Keeps Crashing. Usually a great but horribly overpriced app. However now the color scheme keeps changing and the app crashes frequently on iPhone 6 on both iOS 10 & 11

decent app. they constantly improve this app and add new games and feature which is great. i just wish the features like the crossword and leaderboards would be available to those who haven’t subscribed.

Love it but where are the other puzzles?. I really enjoy playing the games offered by the NYT. However, the app is lacking some games the website has: Digits and Connections. I understand these are beta right now but I always have to go on the NYTG app, play the Crossword etc, then I have to go to the website to play those ones. Please add these games to the app!

Great range of puzzles but flawed. Great range of puzzles, different skill levels but some have major errors that make them impossible to finish.

Great puzzle solver with some little issues. Great app, would probably give it 5 stars if dark mode worked in all parts of the app. It’s like a slap in the face when you complete a puzzle and it jumps to the white congratulations screen and the menus. The only other faults I’ve found are - switching from device, you have to open the puzzle twice to load your progress. - quite often it fails to download the latest puzzle, and try again never seems to help, have to force quit the app.

Has stopped working. Loved the app, but it has stopped working. All I gay now is a blank white screen.

Fantastic and easy to use. This app is great, all your favourite NYT games at your fingertips instead of needing to download the online newspaper and then locate the Games section - especially good if you’re somewhere with slow download speeds! The stats given at the end of the crosswords are especially appreciated and I love seeing how I’m doing each day!

Blank screen. Love playing these games but since downloading the app on my iPhone 15, Wordle no longer works and just shows a blank screen. Lost my streak 😭

Fun. As you would expect, some clues are American-centric which can be a bit challenging for a non-American. Puzzles get harder during the week with Monday’s being the easiest. I can usually get Monday and Tuesdays done and sometimes Wednesdays. By Thursday, though, forget it! The mini puzzles are good if you need to fill in a minute, but aren’t terribly challenging. The anagram game gives me a headache! All-in-all though, a great app to have on the phone.

Keeps on giving.... Daily joy of my life

Worth the sub fee. These crosswords are fantastic. Love the puns and clever clue writing. There’s a learning curve and internal language to these that is satisfying to master. The QoL features are great too, when compared to similar apps.

Why a separate app?. Why have to apps ? These games are already in the NYTIMES app. Why make a senate app ? Please make it easier to login with additional login password - iCloud chain and password managers so I don’t have to type. And FaceId login option. I hate to type manually everything every time it’s a pain. Please fully integrate DARK MODE SETTINGS .. it’s harsh o the eyes when I play and it’s inconsistent with the iOS settings makes it uncomfortable.

Too American for global appetites. Clues based on American sports, informal vernacular, TV, films, & trade-marked products like dolls & chocolates, make this difficult for those who don’t embrace the anaerobic aspects of an otherwise interesting cultural landscape. Living in America for a few years hasn’t helped this Strayan.

Great, but. I really like the app, I'm a new NYT's games subscriber, introduced through Wordle. I just wish there was an all in one app with all the NYT's games, not just Spelling Bee and Crosswords. Makes sense really.

Well worth the introductory 20 dollars. Great archive available of crosswords if you are a fan and the other games are excellent but available for free. The nyt articles are USA centric (as one might expect) and the athletic is still very solid. Having said that the regular annual price is exorbitant and I wouldn’t continue my subscription at that price point

Crashes on open. iPhone 11 Pro crashes on start. Have reinstalled and deleted from settings app to no avail. App Support link leads to a search which eventually lets you find a statement saying the best way to get support for the app crashing is via a link in the app. Brilliant.

Sudoku. Great, especially for crosswords, but the two lines of digits to enter numbers in sudoku is awful. Please can you change it to a 3x3 square - like a numpad or telephone or any other orthodox way of entering numerals?

Highlight of my day. And I’m not ashamed to admit it. Love how much I’ve learnt and continue to learn.

Frustrating - good quality but…. The best puzzle available in this set is Spelling Bee but you only get one a day, with no access to past puzzles- even ones you might not have quite finished the day before. Crosswords are good but for non-USA people there are unanswerable clues. They also sometimes include the annoying rebus which allows for more than one letter per square. To me- that’s lazy puzzle building and ruins the symmetry of the crossword.

Daily challenges. Keeps my brain dancin' every day. Spelling Bee a bit frustrating for the words left out -a USA-specific lexicon is limiting and there are many US-specific questions in the crosswords ( but we do have Safari, of course)

Crosswords are for good spellers. This is so hard. I’m so bad at spelling. Pls help. Good app though. I’m just a bit sad :(((

Love it. Love the crossword app, my only wish is that there was a way to do a puzzle with a friend (like sharing one from a book)

Screen sharing on new iPad isn’t functional. On an over iPad model, when screen sharing the clues are a legible size for the person without the iPad to read. I just upgraded to the new iPad Air, and when screen sharing the font on the clues is minuscule. Enlarging the text only effects the text on the iPad not the screen sharing. It is super annoying.

Pay for the subscription but paid content still not available to me. I pay for the subscription but most of the time when I open the app I can’t access the paid content. Have screenshots any everything. It’s ridiculous. How do I get my money refunded?

A godsend. Literally the only thing keeping me sane right now

Wordle doesn’t let me log in?. I’m a paying subscriber and the Wordle section of the app doesn’t let me log in (to see my stats, etc), most times. When it does, it logs me out the next time I open the app.

Not what it says. This is only a 'trial' product. On launching, you only have access to a mini crossword which is super tiny....the NO NY Times Crossword is LOCKED. You need to subscribe and i have no idea if that is a paid subscription since that information is also not forthcoming Dont get ripped off

Move the purple band. Can you move the purple band somewhere away from the keyboard (on an iPhone) - i keep accidentally tapping it while using the top row on the keyboard, which makes the clue flip directions mid-typing. Might not be a problem on the ipad with a bigger keyboard but it’s so annoying on the iPhone.

Good, but sometimes slow. Overall love the games and access, but the app freezes frequently. You never lose where you are, but it’s annoying to have to frequently restart the app because it’s frozen, despite having good internet connection.

Where’s all the games?. They seem to have added wordle and spelling bee based on feedback from other reviews. But where are all the other games? What’s the point in subscribing if everything you’re paying to access isn’t provided in the app?

Connections. Connections is the one true excitement of my office day. Whoever made this game should become the Mayor of New York, and now that it’s on the app the world is a better place.

Unusable on iPad. Keyboard is zoomed in to a few letters. I have not changed any setting to do this. I reported this bug months ago and was forced to use the web browser. What is the point of having the app? It also does have the majority of the games on offer so again, why have the app when you need to use an internet browser for many of the offerings anyway?

Poor value. Crosswords are good but the subscription cost is way way too high. Considering the huge annual cost, the extra packs should really come for free. And why not have leaderboards for the actual puzzles too - it would be much more meaningful than just minis. Also how about less trivia and more meaningful descriptions in the version history. Update: now it’s asking to access other devices on my network, for no logical reason and no explanation is given in the incredibly vague update notes.

Needs other games. It would be great if this app could include all the offered games on the website. I think it could also be much more user-friendly. It would also be helpful to be able to purchase ongoing gift subscriptions.

Fantastic.. Easy to use, intuitive, and deeply addictive. Tech support were fast & friendly. Great app!

Easier navigation. Update: dark mode is a welcome change but please remove white screens in the menus. One gripe. I was just struggling with a crossword. I’m relatively new to enjoying crosswords (thanks to this app) and I figured out what TEBUS was after not being able to finish a few and revealing the answer. Now I have been completing these crosswords with some difficulty but I have just found my first number (3) in a crossword. I suffered over this clue and tried using REBUS with a number of words only to find a number is in the answer. I thought it was an rule that there were no numbers in crosswords. Is it possible to hint somewhere if this is going to be the case? Other than that I love it. Oct 19: I've noticed a few comments on hear mention the navigation and overall layout, it would be great to have an update. I'm a fan of the larger crosswords and not so much the mini/midis, although I do complete the free ones. After I've finished a pack I spend ages trawling through the available packs to find the larger one as not all midis are labelled to indicate they are infact midis. Could you please find a way to distinguish the two? I also agree with other suggestions your users have made here in reviews. Can we please have a dark mode option?

Recent change?. I’ve been an addict of the daily crossword for years but lately the clues have become very obscure. As a non American I have to work around the cultural references but that was part of the fun. In the last few weeks I have been left dumbfounded, for the first time ever. Maybe there’s a new quiz person but something seems amiss, and not in a good way.

Slowly but surely chipping away at issues. I appreciate the continual improvements being made in this app. Sync feels like it’s getting slightly more reliable in showing you which archive puzzles you’ve already played, though I have had streaks fail because a puzzle completed on one device was not synced before I played the next day’s on a different device. Hopefully work continues in this area. I like the visual style of dark mode but I hope the app goes all in quickly. Having the puzzles dark but menu selection light just makes this harsher when bouncing between them. Please finish creating dark variants for all parts of the app and enable iOS to automatically change it when the system setting changes at sunset. Otherwise, the app is just as good as ever.

Needs the full game set. Many of us would’ve come to NYT Games via Wordle. I’m now a paid subscriber. When I saw there was an app I happily downloaded it and shut my Wordle browser screen thinking I’d play my daily puzzles (that and Spelling Bee and others) in the app. NOPE - only crossword and mini and spelling bee, none of the others at all in the Games subscription. And annoyingly, I had to delete the app in order to log in to the Games page in a new browser window otherwise I would have lost all my Wordle stats. Shortest-lived app on my phone. Just bring in all the games to the app! It’s like you don’t want people to play the other games, just the crossword!

Excellent for Americans, Good for the rest. This is the best crossword app I’ve found so far. Daily challenges that increase in difficulty throughout the week keep you interested while training you up. Non-American warning: there can be a lot of America-specific answers (really not surprising considering it’s the New York Times!).

Laggy and keyboard has registers touch wrong. When I open the app I always get an error that the crosswords can’t load for the day. I force quit a few times and it finally works. The keyboard is also so annoyingly just a touch off, so I constantly type “m” instead of backspace or just can’t get the keyboard to click the right letters. Please fix the keyboard!!!!

Almost perfect. If I could play previous wordles you’d get 5 stars.

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Buggy. Games don’t usually load on first try. Then you have to close the app and try again or try a different game. It is very frustrating. Some days I go to the webpage after several failed attempts to open a game. VERY FRUSTRATING!! It is nice to have all the games in one place but annoying that they don’t open on the first try.

Good Interface but missing Vertex. I subscribed mainly because I love Vertex and you can only play with a subscription but it isn’t on the app. It seems to be the only game not on the app.

The math ain't mathing. I'm what world is 49.99/year a better value than 2.99/month?

SB progress erased. There’s a major bug where my progress on the Spelling Bee keeps getting erased when I exit the app. This is super frustrating, since I pay for the app specifically to play Spelling Bee.

Daily minis still broken. We still can’t open the Daily Minis. Would be nice if it worked reliably.

Overpriced. They break up hundreds of small pack puzzles each costing $2.5 which will cost you hundreds of dollars to unlock them all! On top of that they do a subscription model for never puzzles! Absolute robbery.

Issues with crossword and daily mini. I downloaded this app to try out the 7-day free trial before subscribing, but considering that I was only able to get the crossword or the daily mini to open on two days of the seven, I certainly won’t be paying for a subscription! If you want to play the other games, the app might be worth it, but if you’re primarily in it for the crosswords then don’t waste your time.

Buggy. The app has gotten increasingly buggy - daily mini not being available despite it being released and the wordle being glitchy and not allowing access. Please fix.

Wonderful. I love it

Fun times. Games are great, wish more of them had friend leaderboards!

Why no universal dark mode?. The new update to the main game index page is great, but why is there still no consistent option for dark mode across all games?? Some have it, some don’t, and there is no universal settings menu for the app to change them all at once. Please fix this!

Dark mode. Please make dark mode consistent throughout the app. The menu is so bright it hurts my eyes when I go from puzzle to menu. Also please add it for the spelling bee too! Thanks!

Great package. The crossword puzzle interface is great - easy to use and adaptable. Plus I can do Spelling Bee, Wordle, and Connections.

Daily mini won’t open since about a week. Please fix

Yay. Love these puzzles so much. So challenging!

Subscription rates are screwy. So let me get this straight. I can subscribe for $2.99 / month or $36.00 / year or I can pay the yearly subscription price of $49.99 and is described as the ‘best value’? Not sure how losing $14 a year would be the best value for anyone?

AMAZING. I absolutely love it I love doing my daily stuff on here. For me on my iPad the daily minis work

I don’t think we need. I have to get back

$$. I only downloaded this (again) because there was no "in app purchases" disclaimer. Turns out it's only a one week trial before you need to subscribe. DELETE.

No dark mode option. It would be great to have a dark mode option. Very hard on the eyes.

Terrible ui update. the worst part is the motion in transitioning from choosing a crossword to the game

Limited Archived Games. I love the NY Times Games, especially the Mini Crossword, Connections, Letterbox, Wordle, and Spelling Bee, but docking 2 stars for two reasons (and will change my review if these are considered): 1) They don’t share past puzzles for all their games. Since they post a new one for each game daily, why can’t they store them so people with subscriptions can access them later? The only archived games/past puzzles are the crosswords and spelling bee. 2) I wish they had an option to reveal the answers to the Spelling Bee when the player gives up, rather than waiting until the next day. The reveal would be more of a fun a-ha moment immediately following the attempt while the player is thinking of words.

Good App, but…... Since Connections is now out of Beta, this has not been updated to include that. Wake up!!

used to love it... support the demonization and endangering lives of trans people, especially children isn’t worth the crosswords..

Broken. The daily mini doesn’t open. Fix it!

App is buggy. This app goes through the same cycle over and over. They do a big update and there are a ton of glitches. They do a small update to fix the glitches. They do another big update where they change features and the same glitches from the first round come back. They do a small update to fix the glitches. This cycle repeats every month or two. This app is about as accurate as their reporting.

Missing games. How come not all the games I paid for with my subscription are in the app? I don’t want to have to go back and forth between a browser and an app. Please fix this.

Latest update is very buggy. 2107-10-05 I’m dropping another star. With the iOS upgrade, this app has become quite frustrating. The colour issues continue and the crashing is more frequent. Very slow to respond and reloads with "resume puzzle?" anytime I navigate away even for a moment. I do hope there’s another update in the works. I miss a glitch-free morning puzzle. 2017-09-22 I've been using this app with the subscription for two years. The latest update keeps crashing. It seems to want to change colours from the blue and grey to blue and yellow, but won't hold the new scheme for very long. Makes everything kinda laggy. I keep hoping for a new update that will resolve this, but there's been nothing. I won't stop using it, but I hope they fix it.

Removed Previous Free Feature for Spelling Bee. Previously you were able to see yesterdays words for Spelling Bee so you could see what were the pentagrams. However with recent updates you have to pay a subscription fee to see yesterdays results. I think the subscription fee is fine to play older puzzles and to score higher on the spelling Bee, however, to remove a once free feature is a bit upsetting. If this was changed back it would be 5 stars.

Please improve Sudoku candidate visibility!. Great games, but the tiny light grey Sudoku candidate font is so hard to see!

“Free”. For for the first seven days then you’ll have to pay.

Be alert!. My credit card was scammed after purchasing this app. My credit card company said the disputed transactions were link to purchasing this subscription and that is when the hackers got my number. Be careful out there.

Love the games BUT…. Love the games and the NYT but every time I close the app it says I am no longer subscribed (I am a subscriber to the NYT)

Love this but…. …please add Vertex from the NYT app.

Needs fixes and improvements. The built-in keyboard is atrocious, which makes it very frustrating when doing the crosswords. I accidentally type the letter “R” instead of “E”, or “L” instead of backspace, at least 10 times per crossword. Why can’t I use my phone’s keyboard? Also, the answers to the crosswords get extremely repetitive, extremely quickly. Are there seriously so few words in the English language that you had to reuse words like “INCAN” or “MEME” something like 5 times in the span of a week or two?

Love this app. Love this app and so do my kids. You should do a junior version for grade school kids

Daily mini is broken. The update broke the daily mini feature of the app, please repair

Keyboard Issue. Please fix the small keyboard issue!! It’s so frustrating

App literally doesn’t work. I have I iPhone 12 and the app won’t load anything. It’s by far the worst app I’ve ever seen. I’m cancelling my subscription next month.

Constantly crashing. Your “solution” of deleting and reinstalling the app isn’t good enough. I SHOULDNT HAVE TO DO THAT. Make a better app, please. I literally pay for this. Also, the lack of dark mode for spelling bee is rough.

Daily mini won’t open since new update. Daily mini hasn’t opened for a few weeks now since I installed the new update. Please please fix 😩

App charge. There is a crossword starter pack labelled as “free starter pack” and asks you to download for “free”. It literally mentions free three times. So I went ahead and downloaded it and it charged me nearly $14!!! This so misleading and can’t be right. Waiting on a response to get my money back.

Won’t stop crashing. Won’t stop crashing

Doesn’t save progress!. Spelling bee constantly fails to save progress.

Needs work. NYT’s puzzles are great. This app, however, leaves a lot to be desired. It has more—and worse—bugs than are acceptable for an app with a subscription fee. Additionally, iOS has had a system-wide dark mode for 4 years and this app STILL does not support it. This is a basic feature and users rightfully expect it to work.

Good stuff. It’s the best crossword app. Period.

Fantastic. Part of a complete day. Love the archives.

So many bugs. This app works about 50% of the time for me. Very buggy. If you’re going to charge, the app needs to work.

Brain exercise. Great brain muscle workout.

Boo NYT. Garbage app by a biased and garbage publication. I can’t support anything you do as it’s all done without integrity & honesty.

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Airplay view is not usable. When you activate Airplay with a crossword open, instead of simply mirroring your device screen on your TV, the TV gets it’s own “party view” that just shows the grid on the right and the clues on the left. There’s no way to disable or alter this view. The problem is the font size for the clues is so small that it’s essentially unreadable from a normal distance. The in-app clue size setting doesn’t affect this view at all. It’s unfortunate because the normal iPad display is more or less fine when mirrored to the TV. We end up trying to force this by repeatedly opening/closing the app until it gets confused and doesn’t trigger the “party view.” Would be great if the “party view” was actually usable!

Great app for nerds🤓. Works very well. Syncs with the web app pretty much flawlessly (though I have seen some discrepancies with Spelling Bee). Puzzles are great because, obvi. Still, a few wishes… 1. The pencil button is hard to hit quickly. I use it a lot. Way way more often than I use anything else on the top bar. Would love if it were the top right icon (in place of settings) so that it would be easier to toggle. And/or behind the MORE button on the keyboard. Or something. - Spelling Bee is so much fun! I wish we could continue and recall older games. - When entering a word on spelling bee, it would be sporting if the completed list was filtered in real-time so that you can quickly see if you’ve already entered a word. - Spelling bee Genius card does that displays when launching the game doesn’t update its stats if you find more words. Would also be great if the genius card had the date and or letter set on it so you can brag to your friends. ;) Bring on the Wordle and Letterboxed! :)

Great with one drawback. Overall the app is great, but needs a better mechanic for when one square represents a whole word when some of the puzzles try to get clever. I can’t get credit for finishing them without individually revealing the special squares, which then invalidates my streak, even though I had filled the rest of the puzzle completely by myself. There’s just no way to enter more than one letter per square, but doing everything else doesn’t count as finishing the puzzle either. Please fix this impossible situation one way or the other.

Love Daily Mini and Packs. I downloaded this app at the beginning of lockdown and it’s been a part of my day ever since. I would feel over when by a subscription to the actual daily puzzle which is why I love the packs. I can purchase them at my own pace. There are 100+ to choose from depending on the challenge I’m looking for and there are so many themes. I usually purchase at least a pack per month. One day I’ll work my way up to being fast enough to do the real puzzle everyday. :) But please please please make similar apps to all the other NYT games! I’d love to purchase packs of Spelling Bee and the other NYT games without a subscription.

iPad version needs improvement. There are two reasons that cause me to deduct two stars: (1) the app does not update (entirely) the puzzles I’ve done already through the website version, so the app isn’t properly tracking what puzzles I’ve completed with my account. (2) The app does not have the “bonus” puzzles section in the archive that is otherwise available through the website version. These bonus puzzles are once a month and should be available through the app but alas they aren’t. The most recent was National Honey Day or something, each bonus puzzle has a theme and the archive goes back to 2000. Please update the app so it tracks what puzzles I’ve done when logged in on a desktop, and add the bonus puzzles to the app archive the same way they are available on he website archive. Thank you

Keyboard bug finally fixed!. I can finally give this app a five-star review! For the longest time, this app had a bug that wouldn’t allow an iPad external keyboard to properly enter the same letter more than once. A repeated letter required a wait before the second letter would be accepted. It’s finally been fixed in one of the most recent updates. I know I wasn’t the only one with this problem, as I’ve seen it mentioned in other reviews. I use this app every day to do the NYT Crossword. I also love having access to the archive of earlier puzzles. I do wish there was a way to easily find incomplete puzzles.

You’ve Ruined This App for Me. I have enjoyed this app for more than a year. During the pandemic quarantine it’s been my greatest joy and source of relief. But suddenly the app was changed to make the keyboard on my iPad Pro smaller. Now, instead of a joy, it’s become burdensome to use. I wish you would change it back but if history is any indication, I doubt that you will. If I understood the reasoning behind this change, then maybe I could accept it better. But given that there’s plenty of grey area on both sides of the new shrunken keyboard, it makes no sense that it’s now smaller. Clearly, the developers have younger eyes than mine and a smaller keyboard is simply irrelevant to them. But it matters a lot to me.

Something going on with the auto check feature. Haven’t had any issue until this puzzle but I had a few letters wrong at the end so I turns on the auto check feature and I had so many wrong which is unusual but I went and did my check of every single letter in the alphabet for a particular square cause eventually I’ll get the correct letter…except all 26 letters in the alphabet are incorrect…for multiple different squares. Had one clue say “some are French-cut” 6 letters. Had “?beans” the obvious answer is “gbeans” short for green beans but nope. G is wrong. So I use a reveal square option and it fills in this tiny single square with the word “green”. I’m sorry…what???? Since when are we fitting 5 letter words into a single square??? Or maybe this puzzle is broken???

Smooth (99% of the time). Works great! And gives you access to many years of high-quality puzzles (which is the real point). Three minor issues: - If you're motivated by streaks, be mindful of time zones and be careful of using reveals or checks inadvertently. (Wish there was a way to disable these or at least require confirmation.) - Would be nice if the Rebus button was easier to get to (only an issue on the iPhone app's interface; the iPad's is fine). - The recent iOS app redesign is a bit disorienting for long-time users but is more consistent with the web interface.

Great program for crossword puzzle enthusiast!!!. I have enjoyed solving and trying to solve NY Times puzzles online for years! I thoroughly love the program and how accessible it is. I would improve nothing and leave the program exactly as it is in the future! ** Caveat as on August 2, 2022: I recently did a crossword from 1994. It included symbols that I cannot access on Crossword. I can access the normal ones like @, #, $, &, etc. However the puzzle called for the cent symbol several times. I just realized it’s not included on my iPad keyboard either. Is there a way to expand the keyboard? Just saying…

More Games, More Archives!. So far I’ve enjoyed these games so much that I got a subscription to the NYT just so I can play them all. I have a couple of suggestions that would compel me to keep my subscription going! 1) Please bring digits and vertex to the app! These are such great games on the NYT website, and I would love to be able to play them in the app. That way, I could keep track of my stats and avoid the occasional bugs/glitches that come from playing them via the website on Safari. 2) I would love if more games had archives available! I use the archives for the Mini and for Spelling Bee religiously, so it would be amazing if I could access previous puzzles, like with the new (and awesome) game, Connections.

Great app, but.... I love this app. Use it every single day on my train ride to and from NYC from Connecticut. The one complaint I have, which I have written tech support about more than once: please let the app download the next day's puzzle when I am at home and connected to wireless. The app tells me the puzzle is available, so how hard can it be to have the option to go ahead and download it automatically? Countless times I have been on the train with spotty cellular service, ready to solve a puzzle but I have to wait for the train to pass through an area with better cell service. Sooooooo frustrating. Please fix that one flaw!

Great crossword app, but with a caveat. I really love this app in a lot of ways and it's absolutely worth the $5 a month, but there's one major issue: There seems to be a bug that constantly causes new puzzles to not load. Eventually they do, but only after messing around with the app and getting about two dozen error messages. If this problem gets fixed, it would definitely be a five-star app. I will say though (and I acknowledge that this is a matter of personal preference), I don't think I'm a huge fan of some of the answers being phrases instead of single words. I'm not exactly a crossword fanatic, though, so maybe that's a pretty common thing in crossword puzzles and I just don't realize it.

In app purchases deleted. I purchase 20+ packs over the last few years only to find them removed from my account last month. I contacted their support group and they have been very slow to respond, unable to fix the issue, and seemingly have no record of my purchases since they just requested the receipts of my 3 dollar purchases over the last several years. The puzzles are awesome, loved the app until a month ago, but this review is 1 star because their customer/technical support is totally inept and I want to caution everyone of this issue.

SO MANY PROBLEMS! And they keep adding more!. Nov. 7, 2022: New bug: Now when I finish a puzzle and then look at my stats, it shows the average for that day is around 20 seconds or less! I always have to kill the app and go back in to see the actual average. New bad thing: Now when I finish a mini puzzle, it shows that I finished it with a bright white screen, when I have the puzzle in dark mode. So it blinds me at night. It would be nice if all the screens could be in dark mode, so I’m not blinded every time I switch to a different screen. Another new bad thing: Now when I press the backspace key to delete a letter, the cursor stays right there, so I have to hit it again to move the cursor to the left. Sometimes this makes me make more mistakes and makes my time worse. Since they added “More Games” right below the puzzles, I have to scroll to see the mini puzzles. If you have to have “More Games” there, would you please make the big puzzle boxes smaller so I can see more on the page at once? Also, every time I close a puzzle, it gets giant and fills the screen before exiting. It’s annoying and makes it take longer to exit a puzzle.

Finish online or break your streak. This app is perfect for daily solvers who are always connected via WiFi or data. But I am often outside cellular service areas during hiking/backpacking trips. As I have discovered the hard way (multiple times!), if one completes the daily crossword while offline, the app will not sync properly with the master database upon reconnecting, thus breaking the consecutive days streak. The first time I was bitten by this, I contacted tech support, who helped resolve the issue manually. But as it continued to occur, I realized that I was just going to have to live with it. It is annoying but not earth-shattering ("first world problem"). On a brighter note, it is very convenient that the Spelling Bee has been folded into the app.

Great app. I only started doing the NYT games because it was available on mobile. The app is very reliable and they keep improving it. I’ve seen multiple iterations already and it just gets better and they keep adding games and features. It’s clear they are actively working on it. I paid for the game membership because I wanted to be able to play more games and do more crosswords. I initially paid through the app but renewed through their website because they deserve all the money (so a portion doesn’t go to apple). 10/10 recommend to anyone who likes crosswords or just needs something to pass time that doesn’t include social media.

Great!. The NYT Crossword app rules! It really helps me get through the drudgery here at work, and with the archive there are enough crosswords to keep you busy until the day you die. 😅 It is a bit of a shame that you have to subscribe to the Crossword to get the full experience, but it’s only $40 for an entire year, AND you can usually grab a $10 discount or a free trial through a service or mailing list that you’re already a part of - the Geeks Who Drink pub trivia company gave out three-month trials at least twice over the past year. All in all, this app is awesome. If you like crosswords at all, you owe it to yourself to download and sign up today!

Be Chasis I’ve Used. The NYT crossword puzzle app is superb. Very flexible with only a few minor glitches I would change. I would put more space between the icons at the top of the puzzle because it seems like I frequently hit the wrong one when I’m trying to select one of them. As far as the quality of the puzzles, you must be really sharp and bring your A game to solve Thursday through Sunday puzzles! Sometimes I think they’re a little too difficult to have fun with. Pathetically difficult! But that’s the nature of the crosswords from the NYT, so no surprise there. Highly recommend this app. Rotten to the core newspaper, but the crosswords are great!

Curated packs NOT included in subscription. Just writing to let others know that the curated puzzle packs are not included in the annual/monthly subscription. They really need to make this clearer, as I would not have gotten the annual if this was made clear. I get that you get access to the archives, so I don't understand why subscribers can't access the packs, it would make selecting a puzzle so much more convenient, and save quite a bit of time browsing for puzzles. I do like the app, but I am extremely disappointed by this, and really don't feel it's worth the subscription as I was looking for another app to supplement with puzzles I could play on the easy days when you finish quickly, and access to the archive sounded appealing, but without the option to play packs the app is just not as appealing.

Some of the point is gone for me. I really like crosswords, and I like hard ones. The focus at the NYT games section is now colorful graphic puzzles that you can do in under 5 minutes. With the exception of most of the Friday and Saturday crosswords I often don’t enjoy most of the puzzles. Going forward I’m thinking does it make sense to subscribe and then just use it for a hundred days out of the year? Also the completely boneheaded decision to make the variety puzzles especially the acrostic unavailable except for those who get a paper, was unapologetically dismissive of their customers. The app interface is good and makes using it easy unlike the clunky London Times crossword platform- but I enjoy the puzzles over there. I may be migrating there for good.

Terrible Crossword App. The NY Times puzzles are good but the app is not. It has limited functionality compared to other apps. You can’t see more than one clue at a time, it feels slow and clunky trying to switch to different clues, you can’t highlight any squares, it insists on timing you, but then hides all the solving times for the current puzzle, inputting rebus squares is slow and clunky and the look sometimes doesn’t match what would be printed on paper. It used to be that you didn’t have to use the Times app to solve the Times puzzles, but they changed their policy and now you do, so overall a Times crossword puzzle subscription is a worse product. If you doubt me try some other apps or perhaps try the WSJ online interface and see if there is anything the Times app is better at.

A Lovely On-Again, Off-Again Relationship. Looking desperately for boredom-quelling things in college, the New York Times crossword was the perfect way to kill time while staying in the real world. Their crossword carries such a deep reservoir of current affairs in its nearly 40-year history, all of it affordable and accessible. Even with lapses of “do I wanna, don’t I wanna?” with my subscription, I savor the challenge that NYT’s crossword brings. Far more rewarding than laying down even more cash and using so much space for crossword books and even NYT papers. Highly recommended, watch out for the difficulty snarl come the weekends.

Great puzzles; frustrating app. I love the puzzles — well, some of them — but this app is very frustrating! Weird glitches abound. Sometimes the keyboard doesn’t appear. It asks if I want to resume the puzzle I was just working on instead of just taking me to it. (Of course I do!) But the biggest issue with it is the puzzle selection interface. There’s no clear indication of which pack you were just working on, so if you happen to leave the puzzle, it can be a second puzzle finding your way back to it. Within a pack, why does it only show 10 puzzles per “page” and leave over half the screen blank? Worse is the process of finding new packs to buy. I have zero — ZERO — interest in the “mini” and “midi” puzzles. I want something that will occupy my attention for more than 45 seconds! I’m only looking for packs of old puzzles from the paper. But with absolutely no way to filter the available packs, and no discernible order, I’m left scrolling through a random list of things I’m not interested in. I’ve spent more money on IAP with this app than probably any other. I just wish some of that money would go to improving the app itself.

Extremely poor design. Do not subscribe!. The NYT Crossword app has eaten my money for a subscription twice now, and has not given me the subscription for which I have paid. I bought a NYT Crossword subscription through the App Store, and although I had logged in to my NYT account on the app, I could not link the subscription for which I have paid to the account I paid for it on. I would like to use my subscription on my computer and phone, but without a linked account, it only functions on the iPad. Support has been worse than useless. They did not address the problem, instead suggesting that I try to find a custom, uniquely generated email that apparently was created when I purchased the subscription. After failing to find it, I called Apple support, who informed me that there was no such thing. I decided to ask for a refund and attempt to repurchase the subscription while double-checking that all email addresses were the same and were logged in pre-purchase. In spite of all of that, the problem persists. And now the person who responded to my help inquiry at NYT appears to have no knowledge of any of the previous attempts to get it solved. Do not pay a bent penny for this buggy, poorly designed trash heap of a subscription system.

Easy to navigate and use.. This app delivers the quality experience the branding implies. One of my favorite features is the Archive. If I want a quick work-out, I go back in time and work a Monday through Wednesday puzzle (though the latter can be quirky and require the Rebus function). Later in the week, of course, the puzzle is more challenging. Judicious use of "check word" can get you back up and running toward completion if you seem horribly stuck on a Friday or Saturday and if you don’t mind breaking a “streak.” All-in-all an excellent value if you enjoy a quality crossword experience.

JBK727. Since the evening of June 26, 2019, the NYT crossword puzzle on my iPad and iPhone has become inaccessible. That date also marks the first time the tag introducing the “leaderboard” feature first appeared on the app. Since the 26th, when I tap on the Crossword icon, the screen goes quickly to the Crossword face page, then immediately to a black screen and back to the iPad’s main screen. The same thing happens on my iPhone. My instruments have the latest iOS updates. I have re-booted the equipment and downloaded the latest version of the app more than once, but the problem persists. I have had the iPad and iPhone checked out by staff at the Apple Store, and nothing is amiss with the hardware. They have cleared and reset the settings and rebooted the instruments, and I am still unable to reach the puzzle. Any information or guidance you are able to provide in how to correct this problem will be greatly appreciated. I miss my daily online dose of NYTCrossword puzzles. Thanks for your attention. JBK

A staple of each day. We have been doing the daily crossword (plus archives now and then too) for a few years and enjoy them always. Yes, sometimes Monday is a bit too easy and Saturday can be a real brain twister but we always get there and keep the streak going. The minis are also great fun. Crosswords are relentlessly engaging; there’s something about them. (Will Shortz’s editing probably has something to do with it.) The NYT crossword app makes crosswording more fun. Puzzles sync across devices. No matter which device you have at the moment your current puzzle is there for you. Highly recommended.

Good puzzles, a bit pricey. The app works great, with new puzzles daily and huge archive of crossword puzzles of varied size and difficulty. IMO, the subscription price is a bit pricey, especially if you pay for the month to month option. There is a great selection of puzzles, though some seem to me a little too New York City-centric, to the point that a bunch of clues are really hard for people who’ve never lived there. I know the Times is obviously a New York paper, but it also serves as a national paper, and it’s rightly famous crossword puzzles are fun. Especially the Sunday puzzles that are always a good challenge. I’m glad I got this app. It has already provided me with many days of brain teasing fun.

Greatest App. Use it daily. Love the functionality and the fact that it keeps track of my daily streak. The archived puzzles are great fun. Keeps me thinking throughout the day and I love seeing how far I’ve come I do wish it had more stats available (average time to solve across all users, all time leaderboards - not just with your friends, etc) and sometimes it gets glitchy with the keyboard but nothing major and generally fixes itself with a quick restart of the app. Other than those minor things, this is my most used app on my phone (including Instagram and TikTok and I’m in my 20’s, so that’s saying a lot) and don’t know what I would do without it

Good app. I never really liked the crossword but my girlfriend loves it. Then my coworkers started adding each other to their leaderboards. I got jealous, especially since we weren't seeing each other in person much back then. So I downloaded the app and even paid for it and now I play the mini and check the leaderboard every day. It gives me something to talk about with coworkers I haven't seen lately, and something to text my sister about, and warms me up for the big ones, which are now actually fun for me. Like I started out faking it and then it became genuine. "Fake it till you make it", I hear.

Too many bugs for high priced app. This is one of the most expensive apps that I own. I’m willing to pay for it for consistent access to the daily NYT crossword and the Spelling Bee game, but Spelling Bee crashes routinely. Usually you can de-install and then redownload the app to bring it back, but now even that isn’t working consistently. I emailed and was told “it’s beta,” and there wasn’t anything they could do. The crossword seems to work better, but I agree with another reviewer that it couldn’t handle the blank squares a couple of weeks ago. I solved that puzzle, but couldn’t get credit as it wouldn’t accept a blank or an X in those squares. Frustrating at this price point.

Constantly broken. This app is constantly breaking for me, either where new games aren’t loading, or progress isn’t being saved in the games when I close out of the app. I’ve had to uninstall and reinstall the app several times over the last few months, but new problems keep happening where I have to do it again. Also, reinstalling has completely broken how I can access the crossword puzzles (maybe due to my subscription being through the App Store)—the main page doesn’t seem to process that I have a paid account, so I need to go through the archives to access new puzzles. I keep hoping this will be fixed, but it’s been persistent for months now. Also, your wordle history resets every time you reinstall the app (although thankfully the crossword history is still saved).

Even the bugs are fun. Having a blast ripping through puzzle after puzzle. No interest in the minis or the midis, just the "real" crosswords. Although the app on my iPhone often disagrees with the app on my iPad as to streaks, times, etc., it matters not. I rather enjoy watching them argue with each other. Along with access to cryptic and "pun" puzzles, the Times web site offers acrostics and an infinite backlog of all types of puzzles. This app does the important job of presenting puzzles for me to solve, all day and night if I so choose, and that's the entire point. There's always something to criticize about nearly everything, but for me, the pleasure and stimulation afforded here is worth nothing but praise. Four and nine-tenth stars.

I love doing crosswords but it’s so so buggy. I also have the app on my laptop which is even more buggy. This one is buggy because sometimes when i switch to my messaging to text someone back and then return to the crossword the keyboard is gone and i have to cancel the app and start it back up again, sometimes i’ll type in the square and nothing will appear and i don’t know why but canceling doesn’t fix that. Also i wish i could just turn the errors on and off like i can for LA times crossword. i hate having to click 3x everytime i wanna see if the word is right (because sometimes in the harder ones i need to play like that). Other than that i use this app the most out of all my apps, and i feel smart when i complete a puzzle.

Bee Review Changed. I love the app and play the Bee daily on my phone. In the last update, however, I lost a feature that I particularly appreciated and would love to have restored: When looking at the previous day’s words, it used to show me a checkmark next to each word that I had guessed. This made it easy to see which ones I’d missed the day before (especially important if I think I was close to getting Queen Bee). The checkmark is gone now — I still see the full list of acceptable words but no way to know which ones I missed. Please consider returning that feature. Thank you.

Love this app! Please fix external screen support?. We just celebrated our 3-year NYT crossword anniversary and renewed our annual for another year! These puzzles are the best in the world. Could you please help us fix the issue with the second screen AirPlay sharing of the app displaying in clues in too small a font size, regardless of the font size settings that update only the main window? The external window is great because it doesn’t display the keyboard on screen (saving space!) but it used to be a larger font but now suddenly it’s tiny! Thank you from happy puzzlers with poor, aging vision.

Beat the Boredom. I love the NYT Crossword Puzzles. I pull them up on my phone whenever I’m standing in line, waiting in a parked car, waiting at a doctor’s office, or on any number of occasions. Today, I’m stuck at home due to illness. The puzzles are a comfort and keep my mind busy. I can do them sitting, standing, or lying down. I’m never bored when I’m working on a puzzle. Thank goodness for being able to check the puzzle for correctness, especially on the harder days, like Thursday-Saturday. That feature cuts down on frustration. I highly recommend them. And I look forward to a new puzzle everyday. The NYT puzzles are the most fun and interesting of all the puzzles I have tried.

Please fix spelling bee. I hope the developers look at the reviews! And I’d love for them to be able to fix a minor bug/issue that developed after the last update. I mostly use this app for Spelling Bee. I absolutely love it! I play it everyday. So my complaint is this: after you try guessing all of the words, the next day you’re able to check your answers to see which words you were able to find and which words you were unable to find. They used to provide yellow check marks next to the words that you FOUND. Now there’s no check marks and you have to remember every single word you found. I hate this! Please bring the yellow check marks back! Thank you!

Favorite crossword puzzle!. I love the NYT crossword puzzle, and the app is even better than the paper version --> when I get it all correct, it rewards me with a happy tune! You can use a pencil if you like, it will check letters, words, or the whole puzzle, it keeps track of my statistics over time, and has a link to a blog. There's puzzle packs you can buy as well. Okay, sure, I do have to subscribe to get to work this puzzle, but that's the cost of living out in the country where it's tough to get a good daily paper. I just got a new iPad for Christmas and this puzzle app was the first app I installed!

Major usability annoyance – please fix!. For some reason, the app prevents the user from typing the same letter twice in a row, so when entering answers that contain double letters, one is either forced to pause for a second between them, or more likely, the second letter will just be skipped and the answer will be entered incorrectly. Perhaps this is deemed necessary when using the on-screen keyboard – I don’t know – but when using an external keyboard, it’s an *extreme* annoyance. It may sound like a minor thing, but I swear I curse this app every single day – which is sad, because it’s fine in all other respects. If necessary, the app should detect when an external keyboard is being used and remove this egregious “feature”. Please! Fix this problem and I promise I’ll come back and give the app 5 stars!

App is great but has a bug that hasn’t been fixed in years. I enjoy the interface and how things are laid out, but as stated above finding puzzles in the archive you haven’t done can be problematic because it loses status. You’ll see a month showing no puzzles completed and then you click a puzzle and it fills in and “remembers” you did it already. It can even happen with puzzles you just did after leaving the app. I’ve had to click 20+ puzzles to find where I was at in the archive numerous times now and it’s annoying. At the very least put a “refresh status” button at the bottom of the month so I click one button and not 30

please fix the app. I have been doing the mini everyday for years and the past few months the app has barely worked. Sometimes it takes me opening and closing it repeatedly and/or waiting with it open for like 5 full minutes just for the app to load past a white screen with the “your free trial has ended” banner (which, also, wish the big crosswords were free but I get it I guess) and now it started doing a fun thing where it loads and let’s me click on the mini, but will not open it. NYT crossword I love you I once stood outside of the NYT building and got emotional because I knew that’s where my daily crossword is born so please do something I don’t know what I’m a simple crossword player but just something ok thank U bye

Great for free, but too buggy to pay for. Every day I get the iPhone notification that the new mini crossword is ready. I click it. I go to the app. The puzzle doesn’t load, it still looks like it’s the previous day, and hasn’t refreshed to make the new puzzle available. It will say the next puzzle is available at 10pm, but it will be 10:05 or whatever. This happens every day. I force close the app and try again. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. It doesn’t seem that complex of a situation, and is pretty important for the function of the app, but it simply doesn’t understand what day it is or when the new puzzles are available. This frustrating behavior means this isn’t something I would pay for. Otherwise the puzzles are fun.

Best XWord App Out There. The title says it all. But I’ll say some more (lol). It’s basically perfect. It’s convenient (as in, the functions are convenient), user-friendly, clear/easy-to-read, and has many functions which allow each player to play by their own crossword rules. For instance, I can check a square, a word, or even the entire puzzle depending on how much help I think is okay to play with. It times you, in case you are interested in tracking that sort of thing, and all the puzzle packs are reasonably priced and incredibly entertaining to play. I think this app is just superb, and super, SUPER awesome!

Feedback to the developers about Archives. There’s not a way to contact the developer within the app so I have to put it here. I really wish there was an easier way to access archives. Am I missing it? I like going back in time and picking a random puzzle. I don’t always finish it. Then I’ll play today’s puzzle. When done with that I want to go back to my in progress or downloaded puzzles from the archives. I don’t see a way to do this! You always have to pick a month and year. The problem is I don’t remember what I picked. I probably have 5 in progress and more downloaded puzzles and I have no idea how to access them. Improving the archives - or having an “in progress” area would make this app perfect.

Latest update. This used to be a great app. Update 2.8.4 introduced numerous bugs. The app reverts to the high contrast color scheme every time you reopen it. Also, if you reopen the app without closing it, it used to simply take you back to where you left off. Now, it restarts, gets to a screen asking you if you want to resume where you left off (waste of time). Then when you say yes, it reopens the puzzle in the last entry you made, rather than where you actually left the cursor. In addition to all of this, the app crashes CONSTANTLY! Update 2.8.5 did nothing to fix these issues. What’s going on?

Spelling Bee navigation is needlessly complex. The Spelling Bee is great, and I love that they’ve opened up the option to keep playing previous days’ puzzles. But the only option to navigate within the Bee to other days is ridiculously complex and cumbersome. Rather than a simple menu on the main page, you have to tap through several layers to get to the puzzle you want. Even to get to today’s puzzle, you have to tap through a few pages, including an extra page if you get to Genius and want to keep playing. Why not just provide a section on the main page for Spelling Bee, like they have for the mini crossword, and then you simply select the day you want?

My new challenge. Never did crossword puzzles before, but was looking for something to stimulate my mind and pass the time during Coronavirus shelter-in-place. Started out with the minis and progressed to full puzzle. I am hooked! Here is what I learned: I am not as smart as I thought I was, but if you get enough of the clues, you can fill in the hard ones. Also, once you catch on to the crossword way of thinking, it is a lot easier...this takes practice. Where have you been all my life? The puzzles get progressively harder, so if you are a beginner like me, stick to Monday-Wednesday, and Sunday for a challenge. I hope some day to tackle Thursday-Saturday!

Rating for app, I really like the puzzles. I enjoy doing the puzzles every day and like that I always have them with me. However, the app has broken my streaks several times when I have not had an internet connection. Today I had already finished the Sunday puzzle, but when I opened the app Sunday evening to do the Monday puzzle, it showed that I had not done the Sunday puzzle. It came up with all blank cells. This has happened twice before and is very frustrating!!! This app should not be dependent on a continuous Internet connection for stats. Once the stats are updated, why does it revert to an old version???