PuzzleBuzz

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!

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. 

Introducing The World’s First Puzzle-Building AI Agent

We are excited to talk about something that has been in the works at Amuse Labs for a while. PuzzleMe Agent, the world’s first conversational interface for creating puzzles, is now live. With PuzzleMe Agent, you can create engaging, high-quality puzzles simply by chatting. Build crosswords, word searches, quizzes, and even WordroW (our custom, themeable Wordle-style game) by telling the Agent what you want.

Simply click on the “PuzzleMe AI” icon on the right of any page after you log into PuzzleMe, and type your request. The AI agent handles construction, cluing, and layout, asking for your approval or inputs at each step. This empowers everyone to become puzzle creators, opening up powerful new avenues new avenues for audience, employee and student engagement.

Trader Joe’s Thanksgiving Crossword Is Now Online

Trader Joe’s, one of America’s most popular grocery store chains, decided to do something fun this year with its iconic product guide, the Fearless Flyer. This company has been publishing this printed pamphlet, which carries entertaining stories behind some of its products, since the 1960s. This year, they used PuzzleMe to include an aptly-themed online crossword in the website for the Fearless Flyer.

This collaboration is an excellent example of how a fun puzzle experience can help maximize brand recall and engagement. With PuzzleMe’s theming features, Trader Joe’s was able to add their colors and fonts to the puzzle, giving their audience a memorable brand experience.

Morning Brew, Vox Go To Print with Puzzles

Is your carefully-created puzzle archive just sitting there gathering dust? It might be time to look into creating a book to breathe new life into your puzzles. Morning Brew is publishing its second Book of Crosswords this holiday season after the success of the first volume last year. Vox has also published two crossword books compiling Pop Culture crosswords and Mini crosswords respectively.

For publishers, puzzle books offer a great opportunity to profitably repurpose their puzzle content, build brand awareness and open up a new channel for monetization.”. With PuzzleMe’s powerful Print options, it’s really easy to export your digital puzzles into a printable format. Talk to us today for more such ideas on how puzzles can help your publication.

From the Crossworld

PuzzleMe Spotlight

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

1. PuzzleMe for Microsoft Teams

Following our popular Slack integration, we’re excited to announce that PuzzleMe will soon be available for Microsoft Teams. L&D and HR teams will be able to use the app to organize contests or host daily puzzles directly within their Teams channels, fostering engagement and team-building.

Once launched, all you have to do is download the PuzzleMe app from the Microsoft store, share a puzzle, and anyone from your team can solve and compete on the native Teams leaderboard. A key benefit for enterprise clients is the privacy guarantee: all employee data remains stored within your Teams environment, while PuzzleMe powers the game with a great user experience

2. Sneak Peek: Guesstimate Puzzles

As a PuzzleBuzz subscriber, you get the first look at internal experiments from Amuse Labs. We’ve been testing a fun new game called Guesstimates, a custom quiz where the answers are statistics or ranges plotted on a graph. Players are prompted to plot data like “Global air travel passenger count” from 2000 to 2021 or guess the number of Wikipedia articles created in a year. You can try a playable Guesstimate here.

The fun part of this puzzle is that players are automatically scored on how close they were able to get to the actual answer. Guesstimates is still in the experimentation stage for now, but we’d love to get your feedback.

3. Revamped In-Puzzle Messaging

Messaging has always been a crucial PuzzleMe feature for guiding solvers and letting creators express their creativity. We’ve now given the entire messaging tab a revamp. Custom messages, sounds and animations are now organized into their own sections for the “Start,” “Pause,” and “Completion” experiences.

This lets creators plan the experience for each solver milestone in an organized way, letting them pick the text, sounds, and visuals for each step. Navigate to the Messaging tab on the PuzzleMe editor to check out the new interface. You can also click on “Messaging” in our Puzzles Showcase to see great examples of how other creators have used these features.

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!

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. 

Spinning a New Look for Morning Brew’s Turntable

We’ve collaborated with Morning Brew to launch a custom-themed version of their popular Word Flower puzzle called Turntable. Designed to look like a classic turntable used to play vinyl records, this puzzle delivers a delightful surprise: When solvers discover the pangram, the turntable spins to celebrate the win.

This unique, interactive reward is a perfect example of how custom animations can elevate the solving experience and deepen brand engagement. Such details create memorable moments within a puzzle, keeping solvers coming back for more. 

NYTimes Adds Logic Game ‘Pips’ to Its Lineup

The New York Times has launched Pips, its first original logic puzzle, adding another game to its portfolio. The game challenges players to fit domino-style pieces into a grid while satisfying specific mathematical conditions, offering a fresh and stimulating mental workout for logic fans.

With Pips, the Times is adding more variety to its games offering, making sure it has a puzzle for every type of solver. This highlights the effectiveness of a “portfolio of games” approach,  with different puzzles for different types of solvers. If you’d like to expand your games portfolio beyond the usuals, talk to us today. 

University Magazines Use Puzzles to Engage Alumni

Harvard Magazine is now publishing three weekly puzzles to keep alumni engaged and entertained. With PuzzleMe games, the magazine has found an innovative way to evoke nostalgia within the university’s alumni. The jigsaw, for example, is often a picture of one of the university’s well-known buildings. The word chosen for Letterpress, their Wordle-style game, is often linked to a recent story by the magazine.

We’ve seen magazines from Princeton University and University of Sydney use PuzzleMe to engage alumni. It’s exciting to see these publications find fun ways to keep alumni in touch with their universities. If you would like puzzles related to your alma mater, you can now reach out to them with these fantastic examples!

From the Crossworld

PuzzleMe Spotlight

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

1. Slack Leaderboards with PuzzleMe

We’re thrilled to announce that the PuzzleMe for Slack app is now officially available in the Slack App Directory. Any team can now install the app to bring the power of puzzles directly into their workspace, fostering community and friendly competition.

Once the app is installed, anyone in the workspace can share a PuzzleMe game by typing /play followed by the puzzle link. The app will then post a message where team members can get their own personal play links and view a real-time leaderboard of their colleagues’ scores. It’s a perfect tool for boosting employee engagement or keeping any online community active and connected.

2. Create Jigsaws with PuzzleMe AI

Unleash your creativity with our latest feature: AI image generation for PuzzleMe jigsaws. Now, you no longer need to search for the perfect image for your puzzle. You can create it yourself directly within the PuzzleMe platform using simple text prompts.

From “a cat reading a book in a library” to “a vibrant coral reef teeming with neon fish,” the possibilities are endless. This tool empowers creators to produce completely unique, imaginative, and high-quality artwork that perfectly matches their theme or vision, making every jigsaw puzzle a delight to solve.

3. Smarter Hints for Word Flower

We’ve upgraded the hint system in Word Flower to be more flexible and helpful for solvers. Previously, asking for a hint would reveal only the first letter of an undiscovered word and the number of letters it contains. Based on user feedback, we’ve made this system more helpful.

Now, players who are still stuck after the first letter can choose to reveal another letter in the same word, and then another, and so on until they have the clue they need. This enhancement gives solvers more control over the difficulty, ensuring a more enjoyable and less frustrating experience for players of all skill levels.

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! 

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. 

Scientific American Celebrates 180 Years with Historic Puzzles

This August, Scientific American is marking its 180th anniversary, and they’re inviting everyone to celebrate with a journey through their historic archives. The first edition was published on August 28, 1845, before the U.S. even had postage stamps! To commemorate this milestone, they’re using PuzzleMe to publish jigsaw puzzles featuring stunning covers from their past.

But that’s not all. They’re also launching special Wordle-style Wordology puzzles with obscure terms from old magazine issues, offering a fascinating glimpse into the language of the past. For instance, a recent puzzle challenged players to guess the word “AUTOIST,” a term used in a 1925 issue to describe a car driver. It’s a fun way to engage with the magazine’s history and see how much has changed over the last 180 years.

Chicago Public Media Adds Local Flavor to Crosswords

Chicago Public Media has launched a new series of puzzles that are quintessentially Chicago. Their “Chicago-Style” crosswords, published with PuzzleMe in the Chicago Sun-Times, are designed to test local knowledge with clues that “only true Chicagoans” would know. It’s a brilliant way to connect with the community.

The latest puzzle in the series was crafted by constructor Kelsey Dixon. This initiative is a great reminder that puzzles can be a celebration of local culture and a way to bring people together over a shared sense of place. Check it out and see how well you know the Windy City.

biocrates Uses Puzzles and Prizes For Booth Engagement

biocrates, a global leader in mass spectrometry-based quantitative metabolite analysis, used PuzzleMe in a creative way to engage attendees at the Annual International Conference of the Metabolomics Society in Prague. They used jigsaw puzzles in contest mode as a central part of their booth, turning a simple game into an exciting competition that promoted their new MxP® Quant 1000 kit.

By turning on name and email collection, the company got valuable leads from the event by pointing attendees towards the PuzzleMe jigsaw. By hosting a competition, Biocrates not only drew a crowd but also captured the attention of potential customers in a fun and meaningful way. The top five winners of the online jigsaw puzzle competition walked away with physical jigsaw puzzle of the MxP® Quant 1000 pathway, and everyone left with a lasting impression of the brand.

From the Crossworld

PuzzleMe Spotlight

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

1. Celebrate with Completion Animations

Solving a puzzle is a moment of triumph, and now you can make it even more satisfying. We’ve added a new feature that allows you to enable completion animations for your games. When a player successfully finishes a puzzle, they’ll be rewarded with a burst of confetti, sparkles, or other fun effects.

This feature is designed to enhance the user experience and add a touch of delight to your puzzles. It’s a small detail that can make a big difference in how rewarding your games feel. Head over to Messaging > Visual Messaging while creating a game to choose a completion animation.

2. Effortless Content with Puzzle Packs

Creating high-quality puzzles on a consistent basis can be a challenge, but we’re here to help. We’re excited to introduce Managed Puzzle Packs, a new service for enterprise publishers who want to provide their audience with fresh and engaging content without the heavy lifting.

When you opt for this service, the Amuse Labs team will take care of the content side of things for you. We’ll provide a steady stream of high-quality puzzles tailored to your needs, so you can focus on what you do best. If you’re looking for a hassle-free way to keep your puzzle calendar full, this is the perfect solution.

3. Now, Add Puzzles to Your Shopify Store

Good news for e-commerce brands! PuzzleMe now integrates with Shopify, making it easier than ever to use puzzles to drive engagement and sales on your site. The new integration allows you to embed puzzles directly into your Shopify store with a simple code snippet from the publish page.

Shopify users can now offer discount codes upon puzzle completion, use quizzes to educate customers about their products, or create themed puzzles that reflect their brand’s identity. It’s a powerful way to connect with your audience, reduce pain points in the customer journey, and make shopping on your site a more interactive experience.

Note: We mentioned in the last edition that PuzzleMe games can be played on Apple News. While the integration remains available, please note that support for PuzzleMe games on the Apple News platform is at Apple’s sole discretion. 

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!

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. 

PuzzleMe Games on Apple News+ with Prima Magazine

Prima, a UK-based publisher, is now publishing its PuzzleMe games on Apple News+. We helped Prima make the puzzle playable on Apple’s news app, enabling them to tap into a powerful distribution channel. Prima readers who prefer Apple News will now be able to experience the publisher’s games with a smooth user interface.

With traditional distribution models under threat, online publishers are trying to find new ways of reaching their audience. We’re glad that we were able to help Prima magazine meet their readers where they already are. If you’d like for your puzzles to be playable inside Apple News+, reach out to us today.

VISA Employees Celebrate Women’s Day with Puzzles

VISA wanted to go a step further for its International Women’s Day celebration earlier this year, and they decided to do it with puzzles. The company created an internal campaign called EmpowHER Quest to create awareness about gender equality at the workplace, and added some fun and games to the experience with PuzzleMe.

Nexus, a leading quizzing company, created a quiz for VISA using PuzzleMe. They designed a five-day puzzle series on the PuzzleMe platform for VISA, including a mechanism for employees to submit a pledge aligned with VISA’s values. Read more about the event here.

Wausau Pilot Monetizes Puzzles with Local Business Sponsorships

We recently had the pleasure of chatting with Shereen Siewert, founder of The Wausau Pilot and Review, a local publication in Wausau, Wisconsin . The publisher pitches its games page as an opportunity for local businesses to get in front of their target audience. When asked about how other publishers can monetize in this way, Siewert said:

Siewert also appreciated PuzzleMe’s analytics features, saying that it helps to be able to say to a sponsor, “Look, they’re spending four minutes on this page, and your ad will be right there.” Read the full interview to learn about Siewert’s journey and how the Wausau Pilot monetizes games.

From the Crossworld

PuzzleMe Spotlight

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

1. PuzzleMe APIs for Your Workflows

Did you know you can interact with PuzzleMe using our API? Enterprise customers can use the API to read all types of data, including account analytics such as loads, completions and more. You can also fetch puzzle-level details such as title, author, and publication time.

Imagine automating the inclusion of daily puzzles in your newsletter, or seeing puzzle analytics on your dashboard of choice. In the future, we’re planning to make the API much more powerful, adding the ability to create puzzles programmatically, integrate more deeply with your publishing environment and more. If you’re on the Enterprise plan, reach out to us to explore ways in which our API can enhance your workflows.

2. Get Insights from Puzzle Analytics

Did you know about PuzzleMe’s powerful analytics dashboard? Our aim is to help you create the best puzzles for your audience. PuzzleMe analytics, including statistics like completion rate, are aimed at empowering you with the data you need to improve your puzzles.

Crossword constructors, for example, can see grid heat maps to figure out which entries their solvers struggled with the most. Play by play reports, on the other hand, makes all solver data exportable as a CSV so you can conduct any analysis you want. Head to Dashboard > Analytics for any puzzle and understand your solvers better.

3. Invite Users to Your PuzzleMe Account

We understand that great puzzle experiences are often built through team collaboration. That’s why PuzzleMe accounts on the Professional plan and above can now invite additional users. If you haven’t yet, invite your team by navigating to your account details page.

Imagine that a game constructor creates a puzzle, the marketing person adds branding and call-to-action buttons, and the web developer gets the code snippet and embeds it on your website and app, all from one account. With multi-user support, PuzzleMe is the perfect platform for teams that want to create amazing gaming experiences.

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!

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. 

GE Vernova Boosts Employee Engagement with PuzzleMe

GE Vernova, a global energy equipment manufacturer, is now 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 once they’re on the site.

Companies with employee intranets, training portals, or internal publishing systems can use PuzzleMe to transform plain internal content into interactive experiences that make communication effective. GE Vernova is a fantastic example of that use case inside of an enterprise environment.

The Guardian Launches Revamped Puzzle Experience

The Guardian, one of the world’s largest publishers, is now using PuzzleMe to power Sudoku and Word Wheel (their version of Spelling Bee) on their
revamped mobile app. This launch underscores the ease with which publishers can add high-quality puzzles to their existing platforms.

PuzzleMe’s design flexibility allows companies to customize existing puzzle formats for their needs. We created a fresh design for The Guardian’s Word Wheel puzzle that perfectly matches the app’s look and feel. Check it out by downloading The Guardian app on your phone. 

Natan Last Documents the Past, Present and Future of Crosswords

We recently had the pleasure of chatting with Natan Last, a renowned crossword constructor for publications like The New York Times and The New Yorker, about his new book, “Across the Universe: The Past, Present and Future of Crossword Puzzles“. In the interview, we discuss the advice he’d have for new constructors, and the place of politics inside a crossword grid, and how crosswords have evolved into a tool for engagement.

When asked what he wants solvers of his grids to feel like, Last says, “I want them to feel pleasantly challenged. I want them to feel like the world is full of really different and interesting things.” For more insights on crossword construction from an experienced constructor, read the full interview here. 

From the Crossworld

PuzzleMe Spotlight

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

1. Now, Generate Large Crossword Grids with Magic Fill

PuzzleMe’s signature crossword construction feature, Magic Fill, has been a powerful tool for creating 5×5 mini crosswords till now. We’re excited to announce that Magic Fill now supports the creation of larger grids too, significantly expanding its utility. 

Constructors can give the tool their must-have words, and magic fill will find the right layout and word combinations to make a perfect grid. This means professional constructors can now tackle more ambitious projects on PuzzleMe with greater ease and precision.

2. Create AI Puzzles from PDF Uploads

Did you know that you can upload a PDF or include URLs on PuzzleMe and get a quiz, crossword or word search puzzle based on its content? PuzzleMe’s AI analyzes the content of the files to instantly create interactive puzzles based on the provided material. 

This feature is perfect for publishers looking to quickly transform articles into quizzes, educators wanting to create engaging assignments from online resources, or L&D teams aiming to gamify training materials directly from internal wikis or public documents. Try it out here. 

3. Embed PuzzleMe Games In Learning Management Systems

We’ve enhanced PuzzleMe’s utility for corporate and educational clients with the new SCORM package integration. You can now export your PuzzleMe puzzles as SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) packages. This will allow puzzles to be integrated seamlessly into Learning Management Systems (LMS) and other internal platforms. 

With the SCORM integration, internal communications teams can easily upload PuzzleMe puzzles directly to their company’s intranet or LMS, making it simple to incorporate interactive learning and engagement activities into employee training programs without complex integrations.

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!