All the news about daily puzzle games

There's a lot of interest in daily puzzle games right now. The New York Times has a great collection of games like its crossword, Wordle, Connections, and Strands. Apple is in the mix with crosswords and more in Apple News Plus. Zach Gage's puzzle gaming platform Puzzmo has some fun twists on classic games and was acquired by Hearst. Even LinkedIn has games now, and it turns out that they're actually good.

Sure, the games are fun, but they can also be reliable ways for the companies that offer them to make money from subscriptions. The New York Times puts a some features for its games behind a paywall. Apple's games are only available to Apple News Plus subscribers. And Netflix is launching a daily word game to bolster its paid subscription for mobile games.

Here's all of our coverage of news and word games. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to try to finish Connections without throwing my phone into the ocean.

The New York Times is starting to beta test a new puzzle game called "Zorse," as reported by Semafor. The game is a "new phrase guessing game where every puzzle is a mash-up of two phrases," NYT spokesperson Jordan Cohen says in a statement to The Verge. As Semafor points out, the Zorse name "identifies the offspring of a zebra and another equine," so it seems like the game will focus on wordplay like that.

Cohen says Zorse is currently only available in Canada, meaning I can't play it myself. But my Canada-based colleague Andrew Webster gave it a shot and told me about it; the game sounds a bit like Wheel of Fortune with a puzzle-y twist.

Wordle now has a native app for Meta Quest so that you can easily play the game in virtual reality. The free app is available for Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, and Meta Quest Pro.

Based on screenshots in a Meta blog post and an NYT video, the game looks like, well, Wordle in VR: you'll have six attempts to guess a five-letter word. But if you have wanted to play the game in an app on your Quest, that's now something you can do.