Wordle is better than the New York Times Crossword

Similar brain-stimulating games are popular among all ages, but Wordle has outclasses many, a popularity is due, in part, to its easy gameplay, appeal to a wide audience, and the ease of sharing and comparing scores on social media.

Apply some simple mentoring (9)

Simple Mentoring

SImple mentoring

Implement

Answer = Implement

“This quarter, our Crossword product passed the 500,000 total subscription mark, which makes it, in its own right, the 5th largest digital subscription product from a U.S. news provider." [Source]

Created by Brooklyn software engineer Josh Wardle, the puzzle first launched in October 2021. Only 90 people were playing it as of November 1st, 2021. But in two months, Wordle had grown to 300,000 users. Today, it has millions of players.

• It appeals to a more upbeat and savvy generation
  

People who solve the crossword are typically people on their commute, in the car, in the train, just to fill in that empty time. 

• Initially, the game used all 13,000 possible five letter words in the English language, but [Josh Wardle] found that his partner Palak Shah had difficulty recognizing some of the less common words and made the guessing as haphazard as it was in Mastermind. He then used Shah as a simple filter to trim down the word list to around 2,000 words that were more recognizable - roughly five years of puzzles on a daily basis.  After finishing the prototype around 2014, Wardle had lost interest and set the prototype aside.
  

• "As such, word games can serve as a training ground to practice one’s concentration skills. The more they play, the more players are able to ignore external distractions and control any sense of restlessness."
  

• The heightened scale and training time associated with NYTCP gives a similar advantage in cognition, as well as NYTCP's higher lever of difficulty.
  

• We have all heard the saying that your brain is just like any other muscle. The more you use it, the healthier it will be. A healthier brain helps you become better at carrying out various functions. For example, you can process information faster and remember things more easily. These functions are all part of your cognitive ability.  Your cognitive ability essentially measures your brain’s ability to think abstractly, reason, learn and solve problems.  Word games can help improve your cognitive ability, as they are exercising your brain.
  

• Just as training with heavier weights for longer intervals improves physical strength sooner, training with more complex puzzles for more time improves mental strength.
  

the rate of growth for it is so much slower.

Wordle is a free....[NYTCP] requires a subscription to play.

From this it is clear to see Wordle is much more widespread and popular than the Crossword

• According to Wardle, the sudden attention he and his partner had gotten over the previous few months had made them uncomfortable, and also did not feel like spending the effort to fight against clones of Wordle that were appearing. Wardle said that "It felt really complicated to me, really unpleasant", and that being able to sell the rights to Wordle made it easy "to walk away from all of that."
  

• The Times stated the game would initially remain free to new and existing users
  
•  Fans expressed worries that the acquisition meant the game would eventually be put behind a paywall.
  

this game is clearly designed for a younger generation of puzzle solvers. 

Word games test the extent of one's vocabulary, the range of words in a language available to a speaker's ready use.  Word games often also increase the extent of one's vocabulary by referencing uncommon words and their meanings, as well as improving the correct spelling of that vocabulary.

By comparison, one NYTCP solving app pulls from a list of 660,101 words that excludes proper nouns, phrases, abbreviations, foreign words, wordplay, etc.

Simple Mentoring

SImple mentoring

Implement

Answer = Implement

• Initially, the game used all 13,000 possible five letter words in the English language, but [Josh Wardle] found that his partner Palak Shah had difficulty recognizing some of the less common words and made the guessing as haphazard as it was in Mastermind. He then used Shah as a simple filter to trim down the word list to around 2,000 words that were more recognizable - roughly five years of puzzles on a daily basis.  After finishing the prototype around 2014, Wardle had lost interest and set the prototype aside.
  

better = more desirable, satisfactory, or effective.

BETTER is defined as "more desirable, satisfactory, or effective" but individual desire or personal satisfaction are impossible to measure in relation to the satisfaction and desire of others and therefore not falsifiable.  'Effective' is often a measurable standard depending on the objective so we should endeavor to define those objectives when claiming superior effectiveness.

Since Wordle takes an average of 3 word guesses (assuming pre-selected starter word) over 15 minutes and only the very best crossword puzzle experts can solve a Sunday NYTCP in 15 mins with 140 guesses, we can presume that the NYTCP requires more concentration for a longer period of time, resulting in a substantially improved training opportunity.

• As with the first two benefits, the NYTCP tests and strengthens memory capacity to a far more substantial degree than Wordle.
  
• For Wordle, you only have to recall from a list of 2000 five letter words while NYTCP pulls from a much larger set of possible answers, while also testing your memory on a host of subjects like geography, history, math, etc.  The NYTCP also exercises your cumulative memory of prior puzzles because many short answers have a limited number of good clues that get repeated often.
  

Wordle is to NYTCP as Wheel of Fortune is to Jeopardy: 

• Wheel of Fortune may earn the better ratings but Wheel of Fortune winners don't get National reputations.  Wheel of Fortune winners don't get invited to the White House.

• Yes, Wordle is simple and intuitive but why is that better?
  
• A simple program can be written that can solve half of 2000 potential answers in 3 guesses and 95% of all answers in the requisite 6 guesses.
  
• A NYTCP program can only remember and re-use answers from prior puzzles.  New clues easily stump any programs.
  

Doesn't that make success at NYTCP a higher honor (and therefore BETTER)?

• Doesn't your argument suggest that more people are really testing their brains attempting NYTCP than Wordle?

• I like free stuff but I very seldom like free stuff because it is objectively BETTER than the stuff you pay for.  Free is an undeniable advantageous quality in a thing but that very state of pro gratis usually argues against BETTER, right?   
  
• Is eating for free always BETTER than eating you pay for? 
  
• Are the places where you can sleep for free always BETTER than a place you pay to sleep?
  
• Often, when a commodity is offered for free, that's a warning flag.  Cui Bono?
  

But popular in not necessarily BETTER:

• According to Wardle, the sudden attention he and his partner had gotten over the previous few months had made them uncomfortable, and also did not feel like spending the effort to fight against clones of Wordle that were appearing. Wardle said that "It felt really complicated to me, really unpleasant", and that being able to sell the rights to Wordle made it easy "to walk away from all of that."
  

• Popular was not BETTER for Wardle or OG fans:
  

• The Times stated the game would initially remain free to new and existing users
  
•  Fans expressed worries that the acquisition meant the game would eventually be put behind a paywall.

That's not good.  We want each generation to enjoy smarter, more complex games than prior generations- as proof of improving cognition, memory, concentration rather than preferring a game where most of the competition is between people who can guess it 3 vs people who can guess it 4.  The challenges of succeeding on Earth are increasing we need a younger generation that's savvy enough to resolve more complex problems than their parents could, not making it so easy everyone wins and then  merely claiming upbeat, savvy, BETTER.  We need a Gen Z that likes the harder puzzles and calls that BETTER>

• PRO accepts full BOP
  

unless they're trained veterans in crosswords

• NYTCP builds in training by increasing difficulty from Monday to Saturday
  
• The Times advises:
  

• Start With the Monday Puzzles
  
• The Monday New York Times Crosswords are the easiest, and the puzzles get harder as the week goes on. Solve as many of the Mondays as you can before pushing yourself to Tuesday puzzles. You can thank us later.
  
• A typical Monday clue will be very straightforward and drive you almost directly to the answer. Don’t believe us?....let’s take a look at the difference between a Monday clue and a late-week clue for a popular crossword entry. 
  
• The Monday Clue: “Nabisco cookie,” “Cookie with creme filling” or “‘Twist, Lick, Dunk’ cookie”
  
• The Saturday Clue: “Snack since 1912,” “It has 12 flowers on each side” or “Sandwich often given a twist”
  
• The answer to all of these clues is the same: “OREO.”  There is a big difference between a Monday puzzle clue and a Saturday puzzle one.
  
• If you’re just getting started, make your life easy and solve as many Monday puzzles as you can. Eventually, you’ll be ready for more of a challenge, and that’s when you move on to the Tuesday puzzles.
  

• One becomes a trained veteran by starting easy and increasing difficulty as skill improves.
  
• Chess is so complicated that a first time player almost never wins.  Would you advise someone interested in chess to give up after losing a game and try Hungry Hippos or would you advise that practice and persistence will eventually pay off in improved chess skills?
  
• Nobody plays a video game like Mario Bros. or Zelda without getting stuck and stumped and dead a bunch of times.  Would a video game that let's you kill the final boss with 15 minutes of effort necessarily be a preferable game or is  the practice and persistence  necessary to overcome a series of obstacles part of the fun of those games?
  

However, the reason Wordle removed the majority of it's words was due to it's obscurity.

• Precisely my point.  One doesn't expand one's vocabulary by sticking to commonplace and familiar words.
  

As any self-respecting debater must know, using obscure words in speeches/talks is not a good way to achieve a social status, which is due to it's removal of those words. 

I will drop the point, as it is hard to argue that it is not true. However, I would like to point out that this difficulty leads to a much less desirable puzzle, at least for the common people. 

But.... it wasn't, put behind a pay wall?  And also the quote from Wardle is from one person, in comparison to millions.

•  Shutting down Wordle-adjacent projects suggests to many that The New York Times hopes to capitalize on its acquisition, possibly to the extent of installing a paywall
  

 A good way of measuring how desirable your product is, is measuring how many people want to use your product. So, not only effectiveness should be measured, but desire and satisfaction too.

While I agree the next generation needs to be smarter, the Crossword is not necessarily the best form of doing that.

Gen Z needs a different type of intelligence, a mix between old-school and new technology. We need Gen Z to be more social, and outgoing, more lively and looking towards the future. And as I hope I have shown, a crossword, is not the way to go.