The Washington Post has games?

When I created The Washington Post Games team, our catalog leaned heavily on classic formats (crossword, sudoku, etc.), presented in aging, 3rd-party-run ecosystems with almost no support for discovery, identity, or branding. Most readers discovered a single game through search, played once, and disappeared.

To focus our efforts, we began by defining goals that would serve to excite stakeholders and guide our impact:

1. Identify, build, and create feedback loops for our existing gaming audience to understand better who they are and what they want.

2. Designing a discovery system that could surface the right game at the right moment.

3. Creating new, native Washington Post games that would be unique to us and serve as our foundation for a product-wide game user experience.

4. Rebuilding classic experiences (like the Crossword) on a modern, native foundation so they could benefit from that same discovery, registration, and identity layer.

This case study focuses on how those goals came together to build a discovery-driven games ecosystem and growth engine.

Define the challenge

With our ambition outlined, we framed the core challenge like this:

How might we transform Washington Post Games from a collection of isolated puzzles into a coherent, discoverable ecosystem—powered by native games, modern classics, and a shared identity layer—without adding friction?

The realities:

• Analytics showed most players weren’t intentionally searching for “Washington Post Games”; they stumbled into a single title.

• Entry points were visually and culturally treated as afterthoughts on an already crowded homepage.

• Games had no meaningful registration pathway and no clear benefits for signing in later.

• Existing classic games were built on legacy stacks, making it hard to add stats, identity, or personalized discovery.

Understanding our players

Behavioral data and qualitative research told the same story:

• Players who loved our puzzles often had no idea there were other games to try.

• Legacy games like Crossword had little post-loyalty as the products offered nothing of original value,

• Many assumed everything was syndicated or generic because our only native game, Mini-crossword, was not original within the broader crossword community.

• We could see pockets of loyalty—Mini Crossword fans, word puzzle fans—but almost no cross-game discovery.

User quotes:

“If I knew there were more games like this, I’d play them.”

“I didn’t realize these were Washington Post games. I thought they came from somewhere else.”

“I sometimes play the Post's orginal Sunday crossword, but I like the New Times app better. And cause, idk, I really like wordle.”

We realized discovery wasn’t just about where modules lived; it was about making the catalog legible and meaningful, and using it to tell a story about what games at The Post are.

That insight is what led directly to creating new native games (Keyword, Wridges, and On the Record) as part of the project—not as separate experiments, but as intentional anchors for discovery and growth. And with that… we kicked off…

Understanding our opportunities

We looked beyond news sites to ecosystems built around discovery and return behavior:

• NYT Games

• Steam

• Apple Arcade

• Netflix Games

• Spotify’s genre/mood-based navigation

Key takeaways:

• Discovery is not just a list. It’s curated, contextual, and identity-aware.

• Original IP is used as a discovery and branding engine, not an afterthought.

• Progress and stats fuel return behavior and cross-content exploration.

We brought that lens back to The Post:

• Our catalog needed native games that expressed our value, not just “another crossword.”

• Classics needed to be rebuilt into a system that allowed them to share discovery rails, identity, and stats with new titles.

Concepting and Beta releases

Creating guiding design principles

From the research, I defined principles that guided both the product system and the new games we shipped into it. Within these principles, we rapidly iterated on concepts to begin crafting requirement documents for final design delivery and to plan production agreements with our product partners (e.g., Engineering, marketing, etc.).

Identity-first play (Registration)

Players should see their progress, streaks, and history across games—creating a reason to come back that isn’t just “today’s puzzle.”

Guided discovery (Navigation / Notifications)

Help players find the right game for their time, mood, and familiarity, not just show “all games.”

Clarity before commitment (Brand / Marketing)

Each game—classic or new—should explain what it is and why it is of value.

Scalable (Design system)

The same mental model on mobile and desktop, so discovery patterns travel with the user.

Using original games as our cornerstone

Within this framework, we scoped Keyword, Wridges, and On the Record as strategic parts of the project, not side quests. These unique games were owned and managed entirely by us, giving us the ideal environment to build - and test - a new design foundation for all games.

Keyword

• Fast, replayable, language-forward.

• Designed to be a perfect “Quick Game for a Break” card and an engine for impressions and return visits.

Wridges

• Built around associative thinking and bridges between clues.

• Wanted to introduce a time-dependent game that would be unique based on our competitive analysis.

• Designed in partnership with Google.

On the Record

• A news-adjacent experience that felt editorially close to core Post coverage.

• Designed to bridge news readers into games, reinforcing the brand and making games feel “on-mission.”

All three were built alongside the discovery system and component library, so they could:

• Showcase the full range of our stats, streaks, and identity work.

• Give us compelling content to feature in homepage modules, the hub, and game detail pages.

• Act as a bridge between casual players, core news readers, and classic puzzle fans.

At the same time, we were planning how rebuilt classic games (like the Crossword) would eventually live in the same framework—sharing the same discovery patterns, identity modules, and detail templates.

Learn and refine

Post-beta launch, we planned improvements based on what we knew we left out of the release, along with feedback from our audience communication strategies—Interviews, further internal testing, and feedback from our player and newsletter community.

Find past games

Initially, available games functioned more like a rotating “week of puzzles” than a proper library. After launch, we worked to give players even clearer paths to find old favorites,

• Added discovery of archival games from weeks prior

• Ability to review past completed games

• Ways to discover and compare your scores week-to-week

Unique registration value

With the identity and discovery layer in place, we could finally make registration additive vs. punitive.

• Deeper stats and history (longer streaks and lifetime completions.)

• Access to archives or bonus content where appropriate.

• Synced progress across devices so “Continue Playing” and streaks followed the user.

Importantly, the core loop remained accessible without an account; registration unlocked more of the ecosystem rather than being a hard gate at the front door.

Navigation and onboarding

We learned a lot about writing instructions and onboarding from our beta launch.

• Limiting branding in non-playable areas,

• More consistent menus between games,

• Rewritten controls for the various features and help available.

• Eliminating perceived complexity due to animation and interrupts

Personalization, Ops, and Performance

• Improved editorial controls, making it easier for non-designers to create games, events, and seasonal events without custom engineering work.

• Optimized animation performance and responsiveness across devices, so the discovery layer felt as fast and lightweight as the games themselves.

• Standardized accessibility patterns (focus states, contrast, keyboard navigation) to ensure the ecosystem worked well for a wider range of players.

Impact

Together, these post-beta improvements turned the initial launch from “a promising new shell” into a mature, branded games ecosystem—one where original titles, rebuilt classics, and registration all reinforce the same discovery and growth strategy.

Business impact

• 1000s of new registered users from previously anonymous games (ex, Crossword)

• Unique games for the Post, generating 8.5MM average page views a year,

• 1 million users per month.

• 63 million ad impressions monthly.

• All games grew to contribute 7% of total ad impressions from unique games and over 20% from 3rd party games.

Sentiment impact

• A clearer understanding of what each game is and why they might like it.

• A stronger sense that “these are Washington Post games,” not generic puzzles.

• A feeling that games are now part of their daily news habit, not a one-off diversion.

Operational impact

• Design system for new and existing game titles.

• Deeper registration and membership experiences tied to games.

• A shared language for how content, discovery, and identity work together in the games ecosystem.

• A dialogue between player and designer (Feedback, newsletter, community building)