Want to play Wordle without crossing the New York Times picket line? Strikers created their own union-themed puzzles

If you’ve been in the dumps since the New York Times software developers went on strikecan’t get the Connections daily fix, don’t worry. There’s a way to play your favorite commute games without crossing a picket line. The minds behind Wordle, Connections, Crossword and more made our own games you can play for free or, better yet, use it as a means to donate to workers to help them pay bills during the ongoing strike.

The New York Times Tech Guild has urged subscribers to stop playing Time games while the strike continues. In a statement, the New York Times Tech Guild, which represents striking software engineers, said the games were “no scab.” The titles include “Word Search,” a version of a crossword puzzle; “Connected” is an abbreviation for “Connections”; and “Strikle”, which is, of course, Wordle. There is also a version of the classic Frogger game called “Frogger 8th Ave” and “Match Strike”, a memory game. Unfortunately for Spelling Bee fans, no such version exists, at least not yet.

PLAYING GAMES: In the great tradition of strike publications, we offer our version for technical workers.

Now you can play and not be a scab. We also want to thank many @nytimes subscribers who stopped playing and honored our digital picket.

— New York Times Tech Guild (@NYTGuildTech) November 6, 2024

They’re all very basic versions of beat-up games that have a look that makes me nostalgic for the browser games of the early 2000s. However, games like Connected and Strikle are essentially one-for-one recreations of the NYTimes versions. The daily puzzles released on Thursday are closely related to the strike, so if you’ve been looking for a clue, here it is.

No, it won’t save your Wordle luck, but at least you’ll be able to maintain your morning habits while the strike continues. The games page also links to the group. GoFundMe. As of this writing, the hitters have raised about $145,000 with a goal of $150,000. The strikers are demanding that the Times agree to a contract without a return-to-office mandate, wage and capital increases to address racial wage disparities, and protections against firings for “just causes.”

The New York Times bills itself as a news organization, but its balance sheet shows that its real source of income is its games and software division. This includes the NYT Cooking App and its games. The publisher announced this. Axios As recently as January, users played NYTimes puzzles and games more than 8 billion times in 2023 – in his latest quarterly earnings reportThe Times reported that it earned $919.6 million from its digital subscriptions (including games and cooking) over the past nine months, up 14% from the same period last year. The number of media company subscribers who subscribe to news only is dwarfed by those who subscribe to other individual products or packages. The Times remains strong while other news organizations struggle.

New York Times technology workers joined the union in 2022 and have been in contract negotiations since then. The NYT Games app remains operational, a spokesperson previously told the Times. New York Times (I know, recursion) that the company has “robust plans” to keep services running.

The strikes come days before Tuesday’s presidential election. One artificial intelligence company seems to have thought this was an opportunity to bulldoze workers. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas tweeted at New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, saying, “Perplexity is on standby to help ensure your essential coverage remains available to everyone throughout the election period.” Later Srinivas tried to clarify TechCrunch that his proposal was not to replace journalists or engineers, but to “provide technical infrastructure support on a busy day,” which, as it turned out, was what the striking workers were doing.

If Perplexity’s CEO suddenly has a backup server infrastructure that somehow doesn’t use AI, I’m sure we’d all want to know. Otherwise, we suggest you not to be like Srinivas and cross the picket line.