Student newspapers are often understaffed and overworked, covering a a variety of news beats related to student lives. This workload makes it difficult for writers and editors to consistently produce content like a professional news agency and gain popularity. Furthermore, failure to have time-sensitive stories within a certain timeframe may also lead to loss of relevance amongst students.

Games for student newspapers can significantly increase the retention rate and time spend by audience on a news website. One can foster a stronger connection with the student audience of the institution by incorporating university-themed games and puzzles into their student newspaper websites.

Key Benefits of Inculcating Games Into Student Newspapers

  1. Audience Interests: Tracking engagement metrics on these games provide valuable insights on students preferences and interests.
  2. Increases Website Traffic: Puzzles encourage game-driven audience to frequently visit the news website potentially increasing news article traffic through additional site exploration by students.
  3. Enhances Connection: Daily/Weekly puzzles like crosswords and jigsaws help readers develop a personalized connection with the newspaper wherein they are incentivized to revisit the website again.

How The Harvard Crimson Used Crossword for Student Engagement

The Harvard Crimson Student Newspaper Crossword

The “Fifteen Minutes” section in The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper of Harvard University used the PuzzleMe platform in 2023 to create crossword puzzles. They came up with nine crosswords that helped enhance viewership and awareness about student journalism in an innovative and entertaining way.

Create a Crossword

How The Hawkeye Uses Custom Wordle for Student Engagement

The Hawkeye Student Newspaper Crossword

Mountlake Terrace High School’s student newspaper, The Hawkeye, uses custom Wordle puzzles (WordroW) to engage its student audience. These Puzzles serve are gateway for the students to explore the news website and develop media literacy, a vital skill in the digital age full of fake news.

Create a WordroW

How To Create Puzzles Easily

For student newspapers interested in creating puzzles and crosswords like The Harvard Crimson and The Hawkeye you can create a variety of different puzzles easily using PuzzleMe by Amuse Labs. It is a free puzzle maker that enables users to create games, embed them into their website & share it on the internet.

To get started with creating puzzles, go to the PuzzleMe creator and select the puzzle you want to create from the new game dashboard. Amuse Labs offers users tools to create 10 different puzzle based games. These include crosswords, sudoku, quiz, jigsaw, WordroW (custom wordle), word flower, and more. To ensure that you don’t lose progress on your puzzle, log in or sign up and link your account. This will also enable you to save the game and share its playable version with others.

Aditya Anurag Roy
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Aditya Anurag Roy

Aditya is a marketing intern at Amuse Labs. He is an Economics and Media Studies undergraduate at Ashoka University.