<\/p>\n
\n\tThe New York Times Games app debuted a new leaderboard feature last month that allows users to check their performance against friends. Now, the makers of Wordle, Connections, Spelling Bee and the Mini Crossword are giving players a chance to compare their scores with some of NYT Games<\/a>\u2018 \u201cmost dedicated celebrity puzzlers.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tHowever, this is a very exclusive offer, as only the first 100 users who add the lineup of celebs \u2014 which include real-life friends jazz singer Laufey<\/a> and \u201cThe Summer I Turned Pretty\u201d star Lola Tung, Bravo staples Luann de Lesseps<\/a> and Sonja Morgan<\/a>, and \u201cAbbott Elementary\u201d star Chris Perfetti \u2014 will get to play with them.<\/p>\n \n\tPer NYT Games, users will be able to add celebrity puzzlers to their leaderboards on a first-come, first-served basis beginning May 8 at 10 a.m. E.T. Direct links to add the stars will be available via NYT Games\u2019 blog and the celebs\u2019 own Instagram Stories. The celebrities\u2019\u00a0scores will be visible in the app until May 11.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWith my schedule, I\u2019m always on the go. I love New York Times Games, like Wordle and the Mini Crossword, to center myself and stay connected with my friends no matter where in the world we are, like Lola Tung,\u201d Laufey said. \u201cWhether we\u2019re comparing scores or sharing hints, it\u2019s become somewhat of a tradition and gives us daily topics to yap about. So when I heard New York Times Games was adding a leaderboard to its app, I loved the idea of bringing even more friends (and my fans!) into the mix. It\u2019s such a fun way to stay close no matter the time zone.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe multi-game leaderboard feature first rolled out on April 22 and, \u201cwithout getting into specific numbers,\u201d NYT Games senior product manager Ian Hipschman tells Variety the team is \u201creally happy with the engagement on the Friends tab.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cPeople are really excited about being able to see their scores with their friends on the leaderboard,\u201d Hipschman said. \u201cPeople are sharing things to social media, and they\u2019re tweeting about it, and writing into us and leaving app reviews. So we\u2019re really gratified with how well this has been received so far. And a particular piece that people are really interested in is that kind of customization, of creating their profile and really expressing themselves through these illustrations that we\u2019ve presented to them.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHipschman says one of the tricky parts of creating a multi-game leader board was the fact that the Mini Crossword has been around since 2014 \u2014 but Connections, Wordle and Spelling Bee all entered the NYT Games group after that.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cYou can go back and look at your scores for previous dates for those games \u2014 but the calendar isn\u2019t game specific, and so the calendar kind of just controls the entire leaderboard, which means you can find yourself in a situation as a user where you\u2019re trying to look at a Mini score from 2018 and then you swipe over to Connections \u2014 but Connections didn\u2019t exist yet in 2018 and so that was kind of a thorny product problem for us to solve,\u201d Hipschman said.<\/p>\n \n\tThe way the NYT Games team took a creative approach to solving that logistical problem.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe created these really fun groups of illustrations for Connections \u2014 it looks like a bunch of dinosaurs. There\u2019s like a comet coming down,\u201d Hipschman said. \u201cAnd for Wordle, we have Wordle as like a plant that\u2019s growing from the ground. And we say, \u2018Connections wasn\u2019t created yet!\u2019 \u2018Wordle wasn\u2019t around yet!\u2019 And we kind of direct users back to the first date for those games.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHipschman says touches like that \u201creally adds to our product voice\u201d across NYT Games brands\u2019 Wordle, Connections, Spelling Bee and the Mini Crossword.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI think throughout our product, whether it\u2019s in product, whether it\u2019s in the way that we craft our puzzles \u2014 like Wyna Liu\u2019s unique voice that is translated to users through her Connections puzzles \u2014 we then translate that product voice through our social posts and through our marketing,\u201d Hipschman said. \u201cBut, in many ways, we hadn\u2019t yet started using that product voice and those muscles in the way that we build our digital products, and this really offered us the opportunity to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The New York Times Games app debuted a new leaderboard feature last month that allows users to check their performance against friends. Now, the makers of Wordle, Connections, Spelling Bee and the Mini Crossword are giving players a chance to compare their scores with some of NYT Games\u2018 \u201cmost dedicated celebrity puzzlers.\u201d However, this is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1956041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[331335,329095,343266,343267],"class_list":["post-1956040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-laufey","tag-luann-de-lesseps","tag-nyt-games","tag-sonja-morgan"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Laufey-Lola-Tung-Luann-de-Lesseps.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1956040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1956041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1956040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1956040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1956040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}