Buying the hit puzzle recreation Wordle was apparently a superb little bit of enterprise for The New York Times. The firm announced its quarterly earnings on Wednesday and credited Wordle for an enormous soar in new subscribers. “Wordle brought an unprecedented tens of millions of new users to The Times,” Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien stated in an earnings launch, “many of whom stayed to play other games” and drove the corporate’s greatest gaming-related quarter ever.

The Times acquired Wordle from creator Josh Wardle again in January, and stated it paid “an undisclosed price in the low seven figures” to take action. Now it’s within the Times’ assortment of video games, which additionally contains two day by day crosswords, Spelling Bee, Sudoku, Vertex, Letter Boxed, and Tiles. (By the best way, when you’re a phrase recreation fan and have by no means tried Letter Boxed, it’s a superb one.) They all include an total subscription to the Times, or as a separate $5 month-to-month subscription.

So far, the Times hasn’t modified Wordle a lot besides to offer it a brand new URL and briefly screw up everybody’s stats. (No, it didn’t make the sport more durable.) But it has begun so as to add a number of nudges across the app to go play a number of the firm’s different video games … and perhaps subscribe, received’t you? It’s apparently working: Overall, the Times stated it added 387,000 web digital-only subscribers final quarter, although it didn’t say what number of of these are Wordle gamers. The Times additionally provides a devoted subscription to its cooking content material, and an total digital package deal.

Wordle’s virality appears to have waned a bit in latest months, as fewer customers are sharing their day by day scores in group chats and on social media. But that clearly doesn’t imply folks stopped taking part in. (I obtained Wednesday’s Wordle in two guesses, by the best way. Please clap.) And for all the numerous, many Wordle spinoffs on the market, that is absolutely a superb signal. Maybe Spotify will snap up Heardle to juice subscriber numbers, and perhaps Framed is the answer to every thing that ails Netflix. Worldle might positively be a function of Google Maps.

The Times has intimated prior to now that it’d ultimately make Wordle a subscriber-only recreation, however didn’t say something about its plans on its earnings name. And if the sport continues to carry that many individuals into its ecosystem, the Times may simply resolve it’s higher exterior the paywall.