NY Times says Wordle drove “tens of millions” of new users, record growth

Enlarge / Wordle's value to The New York Times isn't much of a puzzle.

The New York Times' seven-figure purchase of viral hit Wordle in January was "incredibly valuable" to the company and was responsible for "an unprecedented tens of millions of new users to The Times," the media giant said in announcing its quarterly earnings Wednesday morning. And while New York Times Co. CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said the "majority of these incremental users only played Wordle, many... stayed to play other games, which drove our best quarter ever for net subscriber additions to Games."

Levien said during an earnings call that the number of average weekly users for the Times' non-Wordle games "nearly doubled" during the quarter ending in March. The game "played an outsized role in the quarter's engagement and subscriber growth," she added.

The Wordle acquisition was part of a larger effort to make The New York Times seem "more valuable to more people by helping them make the most of their lives and passions," Levien said during the call.