Within hours of publishing The Times’s first Mini crossword, I’d set off a round of social media hand-wringing for including an abbreviated internet profanity, leading to some nervous moments when I wondered whether my first day on the job would also be my last. In the preceding months, The Times had designed and launched a new crossword app, and the Mini was part of the new package. The idea was simple: We wanted a way to encourage more people to try the main New York Times crossword puzzle, which is considered one of the toughest — and which many beginner solvers find overly intimidating. It would be offered every day, for free, right next to the main puzzle. The hope was that it would bring beginner solvers back each day until they were prepared to scale up.

Source: New York Times March 26, 2019 09:00 UTC