Striking NYT workers are asking you to skip Wordle—but they made other games for you to play

New York Times tech workers are still on strike after walking out one day before the presidential election. That means they’re still asking people to skip their usual Crossword, Wordle, or Connections routines. But now, the union has released its own offerings for games lovers that keep them from crossing the digital picket line.

“We know how hard it is to break your Wordle streak, so we have been hard at work making more games for our supporters!” The Times Tech Guild wrote on X on Thursday.

On a page of the guild’s website called Guild Builds, there are currently seven games: Strikle, a riff on Wordle; Connections: Strike Edition; Word Search; Match Strike, a memory matching game; Frogger 8th Ave (the New York Times office is located on Eighth Avenue); Scabby’s Fair Contract Builder (a reference to labor action symbol Scabby the Rat); and Trivia and Jokes.

The games might not have new versions daily; they’ll be updated “when they can be,” Jen Sheehan, spokesperson for the NewsGuild of New York (which the New York Times Tech Guild is a part of), told The Verge. Sheehan added that guild members made all of the games except for Strikle, which was made by an “external supporter.” (Strikle first debuted when the guild held a one-day walkout in 2022.)

The New York Times Tech Guild represents more than 600 workers, including software engineers, data analysts, designers, and others behind games like the Daily Crossword and the Times’s apps and audio products. The Guild has been in contract negotiations with Times management for more than two years; its election to certify the union happened in March 2022.

The guild has also asked people not to use the Times Cooking app during the duration of the strike, so its Guild Builds page also includes recipes with a “strike” theme—like kimchi “just cause” jigae, referring to the job protections the guild is seeking, which mean employees couldn’t be fired without reason or a fair process. There’s also solidarity soup and “We’ve got beef with management” stuffed mushrooms.