NYT crossword puzzle app subscription

The Game Room
1

Since we no longer get a dead tree newspaper delivered, I’ve been missing my daily NYT crossword puzzle. Last weekend I downloaded the app for my Android phone, and it said I had a 7 day free trial and there was a button to subscribe.

My wife has an online subscription to the New York Times, so I tried logging in with her account. It let me log in, but still keeps asking me to subscribe.

So, a simple, stupid question - do I need to subscribe to the puzzle separately from the rest of the NYT? If so, why does it accept my wife’s login if her online subscription doesn’t include the puzzle? It’s very confusing.

2

I was just having this conversation with my mother last evening … in an effort to minimize the pain of the debate.

She says that the NYT only offers games and recipes for an extra charge – you have to pay an additional monthly fee if you want either.

More/source:

3

I subscribe to both the digital newspaper and the crossword puzzle, and yes, it’s a separate subscription. I use the same login for both, which may be why it recognizes your wife’s login. As to whether it’s worth it, I think it is. I think it’s forty bucks a year, which is worth it to me. I do the daily puzzles, except for Saturday and also do some of the older puzzles. The site has puzzles going back to the 1990s. There are also other games there as well but I don’t do any of them.

4

Ok, so if I log in with my wife’s account, then do a monthly or yearly subscription to the puzzle, that’ll just get tacked on to whatever she’s already paying for her NYT subscription?

5

Not tacked on. I get charged every four weeks for the digital newspaper subscription and annually for the crossword puzzle subscription.

6

Thanks Dewey. It sounds like I should just go ahead do my own subscription for the crossword puzzle then, rather than trying to piggyback on my wife’s subscription.

7

It’s less than I thought; $3.47/month or $19.97/year for a subscription to New York Times Games.

8

Reading further, I think that’s a fifty percent discount for subscribers. “You must be a current New York Times Digital or Home Delivery subscriber to qualify for the special offer of 50% off the stand-alone games subscription rates.” So you may want to subscribe through your wife’s existing subscription.

9

The NYT crossword is carried by the Seattle Times, that’s where I go to solve it online. No charge. They also have the last 7 puzzles available, so if I miss a day, I can go back and catch up.

10

I think they syndicate the crossword puzzle in a lot of newspapers but I learned in a previous topic that the syndicated puzzle is two weeks behind the one in the Times itself. Usually that’s not a problem, but on holidays, there’s usually a themed puzzle. And the site offers every puzzle going back to the 1990s.

It’s up to @Shoeless whether it’s worth the twenty or forty bucks a year the Times crossword subscription costs.

11

Damn Dewey I wish I would have seen this before popping for the full price subscription. Oh well. Maybe I should go ahead and get my own NYT subscription, then when my puzzle subscription comes due next year I can get the discount.

12

Me too. Wish I’d known about this before shelling out for an entire year.

13

I am a home delivery subscriber (Sunday only) and that got me free digital, which I use daily.

I would always try the other games (Spelling Bee and Letter Boxed) as much as they let me play without a separate subscription, because f them for wanting extra $$.

Finally I decided to spend some of the birthday money my mom sent me (I am a 56 year old man with a good job but strong aversion to spending) and paid the extra $20 for a year of the puzzles and it has been well worth it. I am addicted to the Spelling Bee and disappointed if I’m not a “Genius” before I get out of bed.

14

Aww, man…I didn’t even know there was a Genius level. So crushed. I think my highest point total ever was perhaps 90, so I guess I’m trailing far behind.

15

The total points vary every day, as does the threshold for the accolades (good start, great, amazing, genius). The most points I’ve seen was around 240, the lowest was about 51. Apparently there is an unofficial level (Queen Bee) where you get all the possibilities but it doesn’t actually tell you that.

16

A day or two after my post I hunkered down and gave an all-out effort and did manage to make “Genius”, but I haven’t since (yesterday-Sunday-I wasn’t even close).

17

Excellent- if you keep at it you’ll notice there are a lot of repeating words that you’d never use normally but can rack up points.

18

If you tap the progress bar, it will show you what that day’s point goals are for each ranking. But yeah, it only goes up to Genius.

It’s weird how some days the words are just jumping out at me and other days I don’t see anything.

19

yeah, agree - I was able to get “genius” the other day without the panagram (which was meatloaf - guess I wasn’t hungry enough to see it)

I usually try to get the panagram first, and resist the urge to check the total points until I have a few obvious ones so I can sense how far I have to go. yesterday, the panagram was the last thing I got (meantime)

if you’re interested, there is a good site that gives stats, etc.: https://www.nytbee.com/

20

Where do you get those insane beehive scores. We subscribe to the dead tree paper and the Times’s own score for yesterday’s beehive was only 26 and that was a set that had 2 bingos (3 point scores for using all 7 letters).