The morning puzzle, honestly reviewed. A magazine for solvers, by five writers who actually play.

Benchmarked reviews of the daily word games and crosswords we play with our coffee. Long-form essays, a field guide, and a small set of solver tools we built for ourselves and decided to share.

Open the Index → Read the Field Guide

27 reviews shipped 5 writers on staff 487 days of dailies Updated every morning

01 The Cover Stories

sorted_by: editorial pick · spring 2026

BEE

Cover Essay · The Hive

The case for grinding to Genius, and why Queen Bee is a personality disorder.

After four years and a 412-day streak, Margaux Lindgren makes the case that the Spelling Bee is the best puzzle the New York Times has ever published — and the one most people are still solving the wrong way. A defence of the two-pass method, the awkward-letter trick, and stopping at Genius.

MMargaux Lindgren · Editor-in-Chief

Rated 4.8/5

Long Read · Wordle

The five-letter habit that stuck.

Four years on, Priya Venkat unpacks the math behind opening words, the case for and against Hard Mode, and why the streak is the worst feature on the app.

PPriya Venkat

4.6/5

02 From the Reviews Desk

All reviews →

Crosswords · Themed

CodyCross & the pleasure of a theme.

Five years of pack-by-pack solving. Theo Ramsay on why Planet Earth is still the best pack, and how to spot the cluing conventions that make the difficulty curve readable.

TTheo Ramsay

4.5/5

Strategy · Mobile

A puzzle that respects your lunch break.

Seven clues, twenty tiles, ten minutes. Cal Brennan’s strategy review of the daily that nobody talks about and most of us solve before our coffee gets cold.

CCal Brennan

4.4/5

Crosswords · Daily

The Daily Themed Crossword: comfortable, not sleepy.

Two years on three continents. Iris Okafor on why an 11x11 grid is the goldilocks size for a mobile crossword and the premium tier is worth the price of a coffee.

4.3/5

03 Dispatches from the Newsroom

updated weekly

Published · new

Field Guide v2: five genres, the daily routine, and a glossary

Margaux’s edited rewrite of the lab’s long-form reference, with new sections on themed crosswords and the etiquette of solvers vs. spoilers.

2026.05.14 · by margaux.l

Tool update

The Jumble Solver dictionary now ships with 279k entries

Cal’s anagram engine got a quarterly refresh; the new dictionary fixes the long-standing issue with hyphenated compounds. New release notes inside.

2026.05.11 · by cal.b

Review · published

Daily Themed Crossword: a two-year retrospective

Iris reviews the 11x11 grid she’s solved on three continents and four phones, with an honest take on the ads and the premium tier.

2026.05.06 · by iris.o

Column · updated

CodyCross Planet Earth: revisited pack notes

Theo returns to the original pack with fresh eyes and ranks the level groups from one to thirty for new solvers.

2026.05.02 · by theo.r

04 The Masthead

five humans · five beats