The New York Times Cross­words tuto­r­i­al is built with game play in mind. In fact, the onboard­ing process is itself a play­ful inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence. Users are guid­ed through the new online expe­ri­ence by com­plet­ing game boards designed to dri­ve home the fea­tures and rules of their plat­form. Talk about liv­ing your brand!

The inter­ac­tive tuto­r­i­al high­lights dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the cross­word puz­zle and explains spe­cif­ic tools unique to NYT Pre­mi­um Crosswords:

• Leisure­ly, col­lab­o­ra­tive, or “against the clock” play
• Navigation/UI (key­strokes, high­light modes)
• Pen­cil vs pen (dif­fer­ent utensils)
• Hint­ing, check­ing, or reveal­ing words
• Option to print out the puz­zle at any point (to con­tin­ue with pen and paper).

Vis­it the site.

Our responsibilities on this project

We cre­at­ed the onboard­ing expe­ri­ence and a prod­uct walk-through, con­tributed iconog­ra­phy and oth­er graph­ic design ele­ments, and designed and built the HTML and CSS tem­plates that make the whole thing go.