• by Melynda Fuller , May 7, 2020

As The New York Times continues to find success with its subscription products, the publisher announced a rebrand of its Crossword section to Games.

The move was made to better represent the collection of games created by The Times’ team.

Games includes the newspaper’s daily crossword, matching game called Tiles, connect-the-dots based Vertex, Spelling Bee and Letter Boxed, in addition to logic puzzles like Sudoku and crosswords from the archive.

The Times launched its Crossword section in 1941, and introduced its mini crossword in 2014.

The Crossword subscription has proven to be a valuable product for The Times. In its Q1 2020 report released yesterday, the company revealed it has added 119,000 subscribers across digital products like Cooking, Crossword and audio products, in addition to gaining 468,000 to its core news product.

The Times signaled earlier this year that it will continue to invest in its standalone products with the hire of David Perpich to its New Products and Ventures division. Perpich was tasked with leading the teams responsible for standalone products like Crossword, Cooking and Wirecutter, in addition to guiding the incubation of new ones.

“David has been a central player in some of The Times’ most important strategic moves of the last decade, including the launch of the digital pay model and the creation of the group that launched Crosswords and Cooking,” Meredith Levien, Times’ COO, wrote at the time of Perpich’s hire.