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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.

Hundred-Year-Old Magazine Adds A Games Page

New Mexico Magazine has been telling the state’s stories since 1923, when it started out as the New Mexico Highway Journal, the state’s Highway Department newsletter. It’s now the longest-running state magazine in the United States and the third-largest state-owned publication by circulation, still run as an enterprise fund under the New Mexico Tourism Department. This month, that century-old operation added a games page, powered by PuzzleMe, with a crossword, word search, jigsaw, and quizzes.

What stands out in this puzzles product is how the content is tied to life in New Mexico. For example, the featured Quiz of the Month is built around “The Lasting West,” one of the magazine’s own Western-history features, and the jigsaw draws on the magazine’s own cover images.

Audible Found Its Audience in Morning Brew’s Crossword

Audible wanted to reach an audience that enjoys solving problems, and Morning Brew had a format that fit the brief. They teamed up on a crossword with the theme Moriarty: The Great Chaos, Audible’s Sherlock Holmes spinoff audio drama, giving the campaign a natural connection between the puzzle people were solving and the mystery they were being introduced to.

Players rummaged through the grid to unlock a secret four-letter word, for a chance to win three months of free Audible. The campaign worked because the crossword wasn’t just a place to put the Audible name; solving a mystery was the experience, and mystery was also the product being promoted.

B Square Bulletin Hides More Than Words in Its Puzzles

B Square Bulletin covers local news in Bloomington, Indiana. Editor and publisher Dave Askins calls the paper’s puzzle section the Civic Solver, a mix of word searches, jigsaws, and quizzes. These puzzles slip real information about the community into something readers open for fun.

 

“I recently created a word search featuring the names of local schools. The hidden connection was that all of those schools serve as voting locations. Participation in local midterm elections is often low, so this is a low-key way to remind people that an election is coming up without it feeling like noise or a lecture.”

 

Dave Askins on being asked for an example of how a puzzle educates readers.

That same quality, puzzles reading as entertainment rather than reporting, also makes them useful for sponsorship in a way straight advertising isn’t: “Because puzzles are entertainment, they allow for branding without causing confusion about the editorial integrity of our journalism.” Read the full interview to hear more from Askins.

From the Crossworld

Two weeks after Lollapalooza cleared out of Chicago, its unrelated crossword counterpart, Lollapuzzoola 19, brought its own brand of festivities to New York on August 15, with solvers gathering for a tournament themed “Around the World.” This year’s champions: Glen Ryan topped the Express division, Zachary Obsniuk took Local, and Patrick Aquino and Christopher Adams won Pairs. If you missed it, you can still solve the full 2026 packet and sign up for the At-Home Division here.

Proposing via crossword is apparently a decade-old tradition in r/crossword. A post from ten years ago asked the community to test-solve a proposal crossword before submission; one from 25 days ago found its poster a constructor within a day; and in between, at least two posters have come back to share how it actually went — one, and another, titled simply “She said yes.” Even a wedding newspaper that crossed our desk recently has its own couple-specific crossword, built on PuzzleMe.

PuzzleMe Spotlight

A selection of updates from PuzzleMe, the most advanced digital platform for word and logic games

1. A Head Start on Puzzle Creation

PuzzleMe Templates just launched, offering hundreds of ready-made starting points across 12 puzzle types, from Crossword and Sudoku to Spiral and Kriss Kross. The library also includes templates organized around themes and use cases, including celebrations, education, employee engagement, travel, and pop culture.

Rather than building a puzzle from a blank grid, creators can browse for something that already fits the occasion, have it added to their account, and then customize, share, or print it from there. That could mean a themed puzzle on a deadline, a holiday quiz, or an onboarding word search, without having to make all the design and word-selection decisions from scratch.

2. Magic Fill Now Builds Spiral Puzzles

We’ve made it easier to create Spiral Puzzles. They used to be built elsewhere and added to PuzzleMe only as finished .txt files. With Magic Fill, creators can now build Spirals directly in PuzzleMe, while the automated engine handles the complex layout work, generating smooth word overlaps and seamless spiral paths in seconds.

Creators can choose the words they want to work with and generate multiple possible layouts to compare. This gives them more control over the final puzzle, without having to manually work out how the words should fit together.

3. See How Your Answers Stack Up

We’ve updated the post-answer experience for Quizzes on PuzzleMe. Along with getting feedback about whether their answer was right or wrong, players now see the percentage of people who chose each answer, a quick read on whether they landed with the crowd or went their own way.

The popular Shark Quiz, run by News Corp Australia, demonstrates how this feature is used. Publishers who want this for their quizzes can get in touch to have this setting enabled.

Puzzle of the Month

Our pick for this month is a clever crossword titled “Signs of Rain” by Yonatan Catran. What makes this grid stand out is its playful use of circled cells and idiom wordplay, delivering a delightful visual “aha!” moment for solvers.



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 publishers, 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!

Samya Puranik
Latest posts by Samya Puranik (see all)

Samya Puranik

Samya works with PuzzleMe’s publisher partners, helping them make the most of the platform. Her writing turns up in PuzzleBuzz, product updates, documentation, and occasionally somewhere unexpected.