🧩 Highlights from 2025

Dear Reader, 

You’re reading the monthly newsletter from Amuse Labs, covering the world of puzzles, publishing, and updates to PuzzleMe™, the most advanced digital platform for smart games. 

For the last edition of 2025, let’s look back at some highlights from our journey this year. We hope you enjoy this special edition of PuzzleBuzz.

Netflix, Trader Joe’s Engage Customers with Puzzles

In 2025, more brands realized the power of puzzles when it comes to engaging their customer base. Here are two great examples of brand marketing campaigns in 2025 that used puzzles:

1. Netflix used a crossword-based interactive ad on The Atlantic’s website to promote its series, Zero Day, starring Robert De Niro. The crossword used cybersecurity-related clues to build anticipation for the series.

2. Trader Joe’s published their 2025 Thanksgiving Flyer Crossword online for the first time this year using PuzzleMe. The company used their colors and fonts in the puzzle, creating a memorable brand experience for solvers. 

GE, VISA Add Puzzling to Internal Communications 

Internal communications teams at large organizations went the extra mile this year to add some puzzling fun to their work. Here are two great examples:

1. GE Vernova, a global energy company, started utilizing PuzzleMe’s WordroW, a Wordle-style puzzle, to encourage regular usage of their internal company portal. The daily puzzle drives consistent engagement, nudging employees to interact with company content regularly.

2. VISA celebrated International Women’s Month 2025 by collecting pledges from its employees on gender equality in the workplace. The initiative, known internally as “EmpowHER Quest”, added a layer to its PuzzleMe quizzes by encouraging staff to take positive actions aligned with the company’s values. Read more about the initiative here.

Local Publications Turn To Games for Reader Retention

2025 was the year when local publications embraced the power of puzzles to build reader loyalty. Here are some local publications that launched a games section:

1. Wausau Pilot, a newspaper in Wausau, Wisconsin, launched a games section in February this year and got local businesses to sponsor the section. Read this interview we did with the founder, Shereen Siewert, to learn more about their strategy.

2. Get The Coast, a local news website in Okaloosa County, Florida, launched a games section with regular mini crosswords and Wordle-style games. They add a local touch to their puzzles by including terms relevant to the area they cover.

While we’re on the topic, here’s a great interview with John Temple, co-founder of Amuse Labs, talking to Simon Owens earlier this year about how publishers can benefit from a games offering.

PuzzleMe Highlights from 2025

A selection of new features from PuzzleMe, the most advanced digital platform for games

1. New Third-Party Integrations

We want you to be able to use PuzzleMe games no matter which platform you’re on. In 2025, we added a host of third-party integrations to PuzzleMe. You can now publish your puzzles on platforms like Reddit, Canva, Medium and more. See the full list here. 

For employee engagement, PuzzleMe games can now be shared on Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and other internal tools. With PuzzleMe, teams can participate in puzzle contests and see leaderboards within their internal tools, whether that’s a communication app like Slack, an internal portal like SharePoint or any Learning Management System.

2. Puzzle Creation Made Easier with AI

In 2025, one of our major focus areas at Amuse Labs was to help more people create better puzzles using AI. Here are three major updates we shipped this year to further our mission of democratizing the creation and sharing of puzzles:

1. PuzzleMe Agent can now create simple quizzes, crosswords, word search puzzles and more from an intuitive chat interface. Just describe what you want, and see your puzzle come alive with minimal effort. 

2. Magic Fill, a PuzzleMe feature used to create American-style crossword grids, now supports the construction of different sizes of grids, from 5×5 to 15×15.

3. Image Generation is now live for jigsaw puzzles, enabling you to simply describe the image you want, and get a playable jigsaw puzzle with an AI-generated version of that image. 

3. PuzzleMe APIs for Enterprise Users

We made the PuzzleMe’s APIs much more powerful in 2025, helping enterprise users utilize their solver and puzzle data. The APIs enable partners to utilize information about their puzzles like the title, game type and user activity. 

With the APIs, partners can build tailored experiences and get 360-degree overviews of user behavior. Users of the API have found these capabilities useful in building deeper integrations with their existing systems. If you’re an enterprise partner and would like to use PuzzleMe’s APIs, get in touch with us today. 

From the Crossworld in 2025

About Us

Amuse Labs is the creator of PuzzleMe™, the leading digital platform for Smart Games. It is a B2B SaaS company trusted globally by brands and enterprises, powering Crosswords, Sudokus, Jigsaws, Quizzes, Word Searches and more. Explore opportunities to partner by sending a note or applying if you’d like to work with us!