The New York Times is adding another daily crossword, because why not

Okay, The New York Times does not call its big daily crossword the Maxi — but otherwise it fits. Just as Julius Caesar came, saw, and conquered, the Times continues to push the boundaries of its gaming empire with a new Midi edition of its puzzle.

Today, we are excited to introduce the Midi Crossword, the newest subscriber-only addition to the New York Times Game portfolio, designed to be your go-to mid-sized crossword puzzle. Joining our family of crossword puzzles, alongside the Mini and Daily Crossword, the Midi provides the satisfying solve builds on one’s crossword streak.

Gameplay strategy differs for all, but many solvers approach the Mini as a speed puzzle and the Daily Crossword as a longer challenge. The Midi now offers a perfect place to grow your crossword habit between the Mini and the Daily.

The standard Times daily crossword, you see, is a 15×15 grid. The Mini is 5×5. The new Midi is 9×9, snug in between. This is, it probably goes without saying, very smart.

Just the other day, Sophie was noting that the Times’ games were successful enough to raise the question of whether The New York Times Co. was now primarily a gaming company. At the risk of stating the obvious, it isn’t. The Times without games would be a much larger company than the Times without news.

But a theoretical GamesCorp would have a much higher profit margin, because the costs of operating games are so low compared to those of operating a high-end newsroom of more than 2,000 people. The Times only pays crossword constructors $500 per puzzle for a full daily grid — $750 a pop once you’ve had three published. (Sunday puzzles earn $1,500 and $2,250, respectively.) That means that, depending on the veteran/rookie mix of contributors, the Times pays out something between $234,000 and $351,000 a year for all 365 of its standard daily crosswords.

Now, the main daily crossword isn’t the only part of NYT Games, of course, and there are also puzzle editors, developers, product people, and so on who need to be paid. But considering that the Times had more than 1 million Games-only subscribers as of 2023, at around $40 a year, you’re probably talking about a ~$50 million revenue business whose most important product only costs around 5% of that. And that doesn’t count Games’ most important contribution as a reason for Times subscribers to upgrade to the all-Times bundle, the centerpiece of the company’s strategy for the past near-decade. Games build daily habits — people who open that app every day, making it part of their morning routines. In 2025, users played more than 11 billion Times games, with the Mini crossword making up 1.4 billion of them.

So now the Times has added a third daily crossword puzzle, at what I can only imagine is a small fraction of the quarter-mil or so they pay big-crossword contributors. (Indeed, three of the 7 weekly puzzles will be produced in-house by Times puzzle editor Ian Livengood.) The technical infrastructure, the payment systems, the editorial flows — those are already built. Adding one more daily puzzle will come at minimal cost — but it will nonetheless measurably increase the amount of time that Times subscribers spend with the product each day. (Note the language in the press release: “builds on one’s crossword streak,” “a perfect place to grow your crossword habit.”)

All at an annual cost I’d estimate is around the cost of a single Times reporter’s salary and benefits. While The Washington Post self-destructs down I-95, the Times continues its Caesarian march into new terrain.