If you spend part of your day trying to solve Wordle, Connections. Strands and other puzzles from The New York Times, you can now add another temptation to the list. (CNET offers daily answers for Wordle, Connections, Strands, the Mini Crossword and Connections: Sports Edition.)
On Wednesday, the New York Times' Games department launched Crossplay, an app-based game very similar to the board game Scrabble. NYT Games said Crossplay is its first two-player game, playable against another player or the computer. It's available for free on the New York Times Crossplay app on iOS and Android devices.
Crossplay joins a NYT Games portfolio that includes the extremely popular Wordle, Connections, Spelling Bee, Strands and others. The publication bought Wordle from developer Josh Wardle nearly four years ago, and the game was played more than 4 billion times in 2025. Connections, created by the NYT's Wyna Liu for launch in 2023, was played more than 1.6 billion times in 2025.
The Times said that "players around the world solved more than 11 billion puzzles across New York Times Games" last year.
Don't miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.
New York Times Games head Jonathan Knight said Crossplay is an "ambitious expansion" of the app's current game offerings.
"Our players already come to us every day for smart, original word games, and Crossplay builds on that foundation by introducing real-time competition and social play in a way that shares the joy of classic word games, but is designed to be unique," Knight said in a press release. "Crossplay was built to be focused, intuitive and genuinely enjoyable from the moment you open it."
How to play
If you've played Scrabble, Crossplay is easy to pick up. Players take turns creating words by adding letter tiles to a shared gameboard. Some tiles are worth more points depending on how rare the letter is, and point totals can be doubled or tripled depending on the square on the board where you play the tile.
Crossplay is similar to Scrabble with some tweaks. NYT Games
... continue reading