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.
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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.
Detailed rules are listed here, along with instructions on setting up and navigating the app.
If Crossplay seems similar to Scrabble — invented by Alfred Mosher Butts in 1931 — well, it is. But there have been many other knockoffs over the years.
Scrabulous had a two-year run as a Facebook app before Hasbro, which holds the US and Canadian rights to Scrabble, and Mattel, which holds the international rights, sued, forcing the developers to remove it in 2008.
Words with Friends, a multiplayer computer game, is also similar to Scrabble, but letter and premium squares have different point values.
A representative for the New York Times Games section said that Crossplay differs from Scrabble in layout, points and tiles.
Unusual addition
Puzzle-solver and content creator David Clamage, who goes by Rangsk on his YouTube channel, said Crossplay “feels like an unusual addition” to the NYT Games’ suite of games.
“It’s entering an already crowded marketplace of similar head-to-head word games, and it doesn’t benefit from either the shared daily experience or the NYT’s strong puzzle creation, editing and testing resources,” Clamage told CNET. “As a content creator, it’s harder to create content around a game when players are not all reacting to the same daily puzzle.”
Clamage said that one of the biggest strengths of NYT Games is the shared daily experience, which he says seems to be lacking here.
In-game chatting
You can, however, share your gaming in other ways. Crossplay competitors can communicate during a game via a chat function.
And as far as opponents go, you can play against family and friends, or challenge people you don’t know. The Crossplay app will match you against other players with similar skill levels. You can have up to 30 different games running at once.
AI has a hand in Crossplay. There’s a feature called Cross Bot, which can provide a postgame analysis after you’ve matched wits with another player. This analysis will highlight key moments and strategic insights from the game to help players improve their skills.
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