Neil Freiman

You don't do the long words, you do the two-letter words that start with X and Q, and it's just frankly not so fun.

But let's talk about the New York Times.

It's time to start calling them a mobile games giant.

This is their 11th

They have 12.33 million subscribers to the New York Times more broadly as of September, but half of them do the $30 a month package that includes all of their products, not just the journalism, but the games and the cooking too.

I mean, this is an absolute behemoth on the games front.

Every single person I know personally plays at least one New York Times game, whether it's the crossword.

the mini spelling bee and now crossplay.

There's connections.

Everybody's got Wordle.

Everybody's got their own one.

And then buying Wordle for $1 million a couple of years ago or 2021 depends on how long you want to perceive it.

It seems to be a stroke of genius.

And what basically it does is subsidize their journalism.

Times now is about 3000 journalists on staff.

It's most ever more than twice what they'd had a decade ago.

So just an incredible business.

I don't know how intentional was at the beginning.

I mean, they've had crosswords for forever.

But once they put it on this app, it just absolutely skyrocketed.