New NYT Games Feature Will Let Fans Play Wordle Against Celebs Laufey, Lola Tung, Chris Perfetti, Luann de Lesseps and Sonja Morgan (EXCLUSIVE)

The New York Times Games app debuted a new leaderboard feature last month that allows users to check their performance against friends. Now, the makers of Wordle, Connections, Spelling Bee and the Mini Crossword are giving players a chance to compare their scores with some of NYT Games’ “most dedicated celebrity puzzlers.”

However, this is a very exclusive offer, as only the first 100 users who add the lineup of celebs — which include real-life friends jazz singer Laufey and “The Summer I Turned Pretty” star Lola Tung, Bravo staples Luann de Lesseps and Sonja Morgan, and “Abbott Elementary” star Chris Perfetti — will get to play with them.

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Per NYT Games, users will be able to add celebrity puzzlers to their leaderboards on a first-come, first-served basis beginning May 8 at 10 a.m. E.T. Direct links to add the stars will be available via NYT Games’ blog and the celebs’ own Instagram Stories. The celebrities’ scores will be visible in the app until May 11.

“With my schedule, I’m always on the go. I love New York Times Games, like Wordle and the Mini Crossword, to center myself and stay connected with my friends no matter where in the world we are, like Lola Tung,” Laufey said. “Whether we’re comparing scores or sharing hints, it’s become somewhat of a tradition and gives us daily topics to yap about. So when I heard New York Times Games was adding a leaderboard to its app, I loved the idea of bringing even more friends (and my fans!) into the mix. It’s such a fun way to stay close no matter the time zone.”

The multi-game leaderboard feature first rolled out on April 22 and, “without getting into specific numbers,” NYT Games senior product manager Ian Hipschman tells Variety the team is “really happy with the engagement on the Friends tab.”

“People are really excited about being able to see their scores with their friends on the leaderboard,” Hipschman said. “People are sharing things to social media, and they’re tweeting about it, and writing into us and leaving app reviews. So we’re really gratified with how well this has been received so far. And a particular piece that people are really interested in is that kind of customization, of creating their profile and really expressing themselves through these illustrations that we’ve presented to them.”

Hipschman says one of the tricky parts of creating a multi-game leader board was the fact that the Mini Crossword has been around since 2014 — but Connections, Wordle and Spelling Bee all entered the NYT Games group after that.

“You can go back and look at your scores for previous dates for those games — but the calendar isn’t game specific, and so the calendar kind of just controls the entire leaderboard, which means you can find yourself in a situation as a user where you’re trying to look at a Mini score from 2018 and then you swipe over to Connections — but Connections didn’t exist yet in 2018 and so that was kind of a thorny product problem for us to solve,” Hipschman said.

The way the NYT Games team took a creative approach to solving that logistical problem.

“We created these really fun groups of illustrations for Connections — it looks like a bunch of dinosaurs. There’s like a comet coming down,” Hipschman said. “And for Wordle, we have Wordle as like a plant that’s growing from the ground. And we say, ‘Connections wasn’t created yet!’ ‘Wordle wasn’t around yet!’ And we kind of direct users back to the first date for those games.”

Hipschman says touches like that “really adds to our product voice” across NYT Games brands’ Wordle, Connections, Spelling Bee and the Mini Crossword.

“I think throughout our product, whether it’s in product, whether it’s in the way that we craft our puzzles — like Wyna Liu’s unique voice that is translated to users through her Connections puzzles — we then translate that product voice through our social posts and through our marketing,” Hipschman said. “But, in many ways, we hadn’t yet started using that product voice and those muscles in the way that we build our digital products, and this really offered us the opportunity to do that.”

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