From LinkedIn’s Pinpoint to The Atlantic’s daily puzzle suite, platforms are turning bite‑size games into powerful habit loops that pull users back every day. This essay explores why they work, when they don’t, and what product teams can learn from the rise of these “ritual features.”

LinkedIn started as a professional network and has largely stayed true to that positioning since its launch. So when it introduced games last year, it caught many by surprise. With the recent addition of Zip, LinkedIn now offers five daily puzzle games on its platform.

But it’s not alone. Merriam-Webster acquired the Wordle-style game Quordle and expanded its own games portfolio. The Atlantic has launched a suite of daily puzzles. And it seems like every other week, a new puzzle game pops up—and someone in your network is sharing their score.

In this article, I’ll explore the strategy behind this quiet but growing trend: why daily puzzle games are suddenly everywhere, what makes them so effective, and whether they’re always a smart move.

The Wordle Effect: A Modern Puzzle Renaissance

While crosswords and Sudoku have been staples of newspapers and magazines for decades, daily puzzles experienced a renaissance after the viral success of Wordle. Created by Josh Wardle in late 2021, Wordle became a global hit thanks to its simple rules, engaging game play, and shareable post-game summary.

One of Wordle’s key innovations was its daily format—everyone received the same word each day, and the game could be completed in under 15 minutes. This mirrored the appeal of traditional puzzles and helped propel Wordle to acquisition by The New York Times, reigniting interest in bite-sized, digital-first puzzles.

In a 2024 interview with Axios, The New York Times revealed that its puzzles and games were played more than 8 billion times last year^[1]. Since then, the NYT has expanded its suite with games like Spelling Bee, Connections, and Tiles, and even launched a games-only subscription—strengthening its non-news revenue. This success has inspired other platforms to experiment with daily puzzle offerings of their own.

Characteristics of Daily Puzzle games

Daily puzzles differ from other types of games in ways that make them especially appealing to platforms like The New York Times and LinkedIn. The goal isn’t to have users spend hours gaming on the platform, but rather to use these puzzles as lead magnets—drawing users back daily. This is a key distinction from games like Farmville or Candy Crush, which gained popularity on Facebook by maximizing time spent within the game.

Here are some core characteristics that set daily puzzle games apart from other game formats:

• Consistent Rules: The game play mechanics remain the same, with a new puzzle presented each day.
• Quick Playtime: Designed to be completed in just a few minutes, making them easy to fit into daily routines.
• Scalable Difficulty: Users can engage at different levels of challenge, depending on their interest or skill.
• Logic Over Luck: These games emphasize problem-solving and mental skill, rather than chance.

Now, let’s explore why these features make daily puzzles so attractive to these platforms.

LinkedIn’s Perspective

When LinkedIn introduced games, they also shared a short message explaining why—framed around the idea of strengthening workplace relationships through fun and shared experiences.

While this rationale—fostering connection and sparking conversations—is valid, and many people do consider games fun and entertaining, LinkedIn’s explanation is only part of the story. The deeper strategic intent becomes clearer when we look at how these games drive business outcomes.

Three Key Reasons Why Platforms Are Adding Daily Games

Daily puzzles aren’t just engaging—they’re efficient, scalable, and well-aligned with key product and business goals. Here are three core reasons they make strategic sense:

1. Drive Daily Active Usage:

For content-driven platforms, Daily Active Users (DAU) is a core metric that fuels engagement, content consumption, and long-term retention. Daily puzzle games offer a lightweight, repeatable touch-point that encourages users to return regularly. Over time, this behavior becomes ritualized: users may come for the puzzle, but stay to check notifications, read posts, or explore updates— boosting retention and broadening engagement.

These games effectively serve as behavioral cues, reinforcing habits in the same way apps like Duolingo or Daylio use gamification to build daily streaks and user commitment.

2. Easy to Maintain and Scale:

Puzzle games are efficient from a product operations standpoint. Once the core mechanics are in place, generating new puzzles is algorithmic and low-cost—especially compared to curated content or community moderation. This makes them ideal for teams looking to introduce daily engagement without needing to expand headcount or content pipelines.

3. Encourage Sharing and Network Effects:

A shared daily challenge creates a natural prompt for conversation. Whether it’s comparing scores, sharing strategies, or offering hints, these games generate non-controversial, lightweight social interaction. Games like The New York Times‘ Connections have cultivated entire communities around this kind of engagement—something far more difficult to do with traditional content. Shared games lower the barrier for interaction and subtly reinforce the platform’s social value.

Can Any Platform Add a Puzzle Game?

If daily puzzle games are fun for users and effective for business, a natural question follows:

Can any platform adopt this strategy?

The short answer: not necessarily.

While games can increase engagement, they are a double-edged sword. A thoughtfully designed game that aligns with a platform’s core value can deepen usage. But a poorly integrated or off-brand game may feel gimmicky—and could even erode trust or confuse the user experience.

So how do you know if daily games are a good fit? Here are three key factors to consider:

Alignment with the Platform’s Users

Games should make sense in the context of your audience. LinkedIn’s daily puzzles, for example, reinforce its themes of professional growth and cognitive skill-building. They’re logic-based, mentally stimulating, and fit well with the expectations of a professional user base. This alignment makes them feel additive, not distracting.

Match with Natural Usage Frequency

Platforms with a daily rhythm—news apps, social media, productivity tools—are better positioned to benefit from daily games. When users already check in frequently, a game becomes a simple way to reinforce habit and create a ritual. On platforms with weekly or sporadic usage, a daily puzzle may feel irrelevant or burdensome.

The Platform Appeals to ‘Desire’ More than ‘Need’

Games thrive on platforms that users turn to for discovery, entertainment, or casual browsing. In contrast, products built around specific tasks or urgent needs (e.g., online shopping, food delivery or ride-hailing etc.) may struggle to integrate games meaningfully. If the main value proposition of the product is solving a functional pain point, adding a game could dilute focus instead of enhancing engagement.

The Future of ‘Play as a Product Strategy’

For content-driven platforms, daily puzzles aren’t just fun—they’re lightweight, high-leverage features that can meaningfully drive engagement, habit formation, and community interaction. But their effectiveness depends on thoughtful integration. A well-placed puzzle can enhance the product’s value; a misaligned or gimmicky one can do the opposite.

What’s exciting is the accessibility of this strategy. With AI-powered coding tools, it’s now feasible for small teams, indie puzzle creators (like Waffle Game and Clever Goat), or even solo builders—to prototype and launch puzzle-based experiences. In many ways, puzzle games are the perfect playground for “vibe coding”: fast iteration, creative mechanics, and immediate feedback loops.

I built one myself.

Check out my vibe coding experiment – A daily puzzle game for Product Pickle:

https://games.productpickle.online/vertiqle

Would love to hear what you think about Vertiqle—and what other daily puzzles you’re hooked on!

References:

1. https://www.axios.com/2024/01/29/wordle-nyt-games-news-media-layoffs
2. https://www.nytco.com/products/games/

Download audio: https://productpickle0.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ritual-features_-daily-puzzle-games-as-product-strategy.wav

I have a toddler. My biggest concern is that he doesn't eat rocks off the ground and you're talking to me about ChatGPT psychosis? Why do we even have that? Why did we invent a new form of insanity and then charge people for it?

— @pearlmania500, on TikTok

Tags: ai-ethics, chatgpt, tiktok, ai

In the 2023-2024 school year, I had a university undergraduate class that did something remarkable. We had a 100% participation streak across an entire semester. Every single person who was present participated verbally, every single class session. It was a special, shared endeavor, and it felt like catching lightning in a bottle. I wrote about it for Front Porch Republic here. This past spring semester, another class decided to do a semester-long participation streak, and they also succeeded. Have we started a lightning bottling facility?

In 1752, Ben Franklin explained his experiment with lightning in The Pennsylvania Gazette. He described the kite drawing “Electric Fire” from the clouds and the electrified twine conducting the Electric Fire to a key, so that: “At this Key the Phial may be charg’d; and from Electric Fire thus obtain’d, Spirits may be kindled, and all the other Electric Experiments be perform’d, which are usually done by the Help of a rubbed Glass Globe or Tube; and thereby the Sameness of the Electric Matter with that of Lightning compleatly demonstrated.” He captured an electric charge in a Leyden jar. We captured it in a classroom.

One key feature of a successful scientific experiment is the ability to replicate the results. In some ways, this participation streak was much like the last. The class was the same spring-semester, junior-level Honors course, The World of Despair and Hope. Students were already familiar with our program and with most of each other. The class is explicitly discussion based. Everyone in the room was more than capable of keeping up with the work and very familiar with the program expectations. That context mattered for both streaks.

As before, the streak only happened because of the students. I never called on anyone to keep it going. Everyone had to buy in. They did. Students decided to participate, and they held themselves accountable. If we were nearing the end of a session and someone had not spoken yet, they quickly found a way to participate. The longer we kept the streak, the more special it felt and the easier it was to keep it going. Without student enthusiasm, we would not have had any streak at all.

The results of the streak were also similar. The participation streak transformed the classroom environment. There is nothing like a shared objective to bring people together. The students seemed more interested in each other than in other classes. We built on that to foster even more community. Part way through we started sharing weekly personal goals with each other—such as working on a paper, exercising, getting a certain amount of sleep per night, or calling a grandparent on the phone—and then checking in the next week to see what got accomplished. We were not just a group of individuals in a room together.

A participation streak builds a team, but it also does wonders for individuals. There is just no way you will start the semester with a room full of people who all enjoy class participation. To establish and keep a streak, some students will have to push themselves more than others. They will have to leave their comfort zone behind, potentially every single time the class meets. It’s a big ask, but it can be transformative. We had students who would previously rarely speak in class begin to be classroom leaders in discussion, not just on days they were expected to be. Watching students come alive in the classroom is one of the thrills of teaching. When it comes to students developing more confidence participating in discussion it is especially thrilling because you know that is transferable to other contexts. A streak is empowering, and students can be inspired by each other’s successes.

A streak emphasizes the importance of each person to others around them. For the streak to survive, we all need each other every single class. If even one person opts out, the streak ends. People naturally begin to pay more attention to each other—their presence and what they have to say. The class begins to feel incomplete when people are missing. If someone is quiet, you notice that, too. The streak creates an environment in which a successful class includes hearing from everyone. It also achieves what group projects rarely do—everyone is a contributor and seen as such.

In many ways, this streak was like the one the year before. It helped students better understand the texts and appreciate each other. It made every class session engaging. We heard perspectives we would have missed if people had stayed quiet. It made the class a community. And it established this class in the annals of history. They, too, have done what so few have dared to even attempt. They tied a key to a kite string and waited for the thunder clouds.

In many ways, this streak was like the one the year before… We heard perspectives we would have missed if people had stayed quiet. It made the class a community.

Yet in other ways, this streak was something entirely new. This semester began with the conscious possibility of a streak in the air. We knew what those clouds contained. And we knew it was possible to catch the lightning and bottle it. Last year’s class was our Roger Bannister. They broke the four-minute mile. Would that class be the only mortals to ascend Mount Olympus?

The enthusiasm was different this semester. Students had heard a lot about the previous class from other students. Some of this year’s students wanted that same experience. Others were motivated by competition. There was some good-natured rivalry between some of the students from the different years. This semester, students weren’t excited because we were doing something unprecedented, they were excited to prove this group of students was just as capable and committed. We also knew what kind of glory comes with the achievement. We were trying to share in something we knew was good.

We knew last year’s streak was something special, and now we know it may have been the start of something. If we think about virtue being tied to habits and repeated practices, the first streak can now be seen as a possible beginning and not an exception. We can begin to think of ourselves as cultivating a habit of a certain kind of excellence across our honors program. What the first streak initiated, the second streak has carried forward into our program’s culture.

This second streak adds to the excitement of the first and extends excitement into the future. We have back-to-back streaks in my spring World of Despair & Hope classes. Will it continue next spring? Some students are already talking about it. (Others are no doubt hoping to avoid my section.) Could it happen in another class? We know that the springtime junior-level class can do it next year if they choose. That has been proven. Could juniors do it this fall? Could sophomores manage to maintain a participation streak across a semester? Can the experiment be replicated in other contexts?

In a strong program, each win is enjoyed by those who get to participate, and such streaks inspire those who will follow. Consider the Boston Celtics. The Celtics were NBA champions in 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, and 1966. Each win was exciting on its own and being part of a streak only enhanced each victory. Altogether, the Boston Celtics have won an unbelievable eighteen NBA titles. Each one testifies to the quality of the team and its coaching, but every title is also enriched by the increasingly illustrious company it keeps.

The Celtics’ collective wins have shaped a distinctive team culture. They may not win every year, but they expect to contend, and they expect to win more titles in the future. The Boston Celtics did not win the title in 1967, but they did in 1968 and 1969. They won two titles in the 1970s and three in the 1980s. Most recently, they won in 2024. You know if you play for Boston, people expect you to compete for a championship. There have been many years with special Boston Celtics teams, but the Boston Celtics are a special team, period.

With regard to participation streaks, we have two big wins in a row in our honors program. It may be a little early to declare that we have a lightning bottling facility on our hands, but maybe not. That first streak started something. The culture of that individual class proved that the remarkable was attainable. The second streak is another accomplishment. It shows us that the experiment can be replicated. It speaks to the possibilities for the culture of our entire program.

According to Ben Franklin’s description of his experiment: “As soon as any of the Thunder Clouds come over the Kite, the pointed Wire will draw the Electric Fire from them, and the Kite, with all the Twine, will be electrified, and the loose Filaments of the Twine will stand out every Way, and be attracted by an approaching Finger. And when the Rain has wet the Kite and Twine, so that it can conduct the Electric Fire freely, you will find it stream out plentifully from the Key on the Approach of your Knuckle.” If future classes are as electrified as previous ones and the loose filaments of twine stand out in every way, when that electric fire streams out from the key—I hope we catch it. If we want it, we can achieve excellence every semester.

Image Credit: “Franklin’s Experiment, June 1752” via Rawpixel.

 

This article was produced with support from WIRED.

A couple of years ago, a curious, then-16-year-old hacker named Reynaldo Vasquez-Garcia was on his laptop at his Portland-area high school, seeing what computer systems he could connect to via the Wifi—“using the school network as a lab,” as he puts it—when he spotted a handful of mysterious devices with the identifier “IPVideo Corporation.”

After a closer look and some googling, Garcia figured out that a company by that name was a subsidiary of Motorola, and the devices he’d found in his school seemed to be something called the Halo 3C, a “smart” smoke and vape detection gadget. “They look just like smoke detectors, but they have a whole bunch of features like sensors and stuff,” Garcia says. 

As he read more, he was intrigued to learn that the Halo 3C goes beyond detecting smoke and vaping—including a distinct feature for discerning THC vaping in particular. It also has a microphone for listening out for “aggression,” gunshots, and keywords such as someone calling for help, a feature that to Vasquez-Garcia immediately raised concerns of more intrusive surveillance.

OpenAI introduced GPT-5 in a livestream, and they used a set of seemingly straightforward charts for benchmarks. The point was to show the improved performance of GPT-5 over previous models. However, the labels do not remotely match the bar heights.

The bar for 69.1% is the same height as the one for 30.8% when the former should be more than twice the height of the latter. The bar for 52.8% is taller than the one for 69.1%. It’s off.

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