New York, July 13, 2026 – A review of help pages for The New York Times Company’s (NYSE: NYT) Connections puzzle No. 1,128 reveals that third-party websites are generating a substantial volume of content tied to the daily game. CNET, Yahoo Tech, and TechRadar each published a dated Connections page from July 11 to 13, resulting in an annualized run rate of 1,095 URLs before considering other NYT games like Wordle or Strands.
This page count is not a direct revenue estimate but highlights a divergent business model. The New York Times owns the game, the direct user relationship, and the subscription pitch, while external publishers capture demand for clues and answers within their own ad inventory. The Times positions free play of Wordle and Connections as a tool to build audiences that can later be monetized through advertising, affiliate revenue, or subscription conversion.
The publishing cycle begins well before the U.S. market opens. A CNET syndication feed timestamped its July 13 Connections item at 20:00:42 UTC on Sunday, followed by Wordle and Strands entries 18 seconds later. TechRadar notes that a new Connections puzzle appears at midnight in each user’s time zone, creating a rolling audience window rather than a single global launch hour.
The three outlets together produced three pages per day, leading to the 1,095-page annual figure. CNET’s sequence is confirmed by its dated #1126 and #1127 postings; Yahoo published the same successive game numbers, while TechRadar’s July 13 article links back to #1127 and its July 11 edition covers #1126. This run rate multiplies the observed three-pages-a-day cadence by 365 and is not an audited historical count.
Meanwhile, the Times is monetizing this behavior at a richer layer. First-quarter digital-only subscription revenue rose 16.1% to $389.0 million, while digital advertising revenue climbed 31.6% to $93.3 million. Digital-only subscribers reached 12.52 million, up 1.46 million from a year earlier; ARPU increased to $9.77. CEO Meredith Kopit Levien stated in May that the company’s priorities are designed to “build direct relationships and daily habits with millions more people.” The Times targets 15 million total subscribers by end of 2027, up from 13.08 million at end of March. It does not disclose revenue for individual games.
The context is less forgiving for the distributors. Ziff Davis Inc (NASDAQ: ZD), CNET’s owner, reported a 12.9% drop in first-quarter Technology & Shopping revenue; CEO Vivek Shah said the company was managing “headwinds challenging other parts of our portfolio.” Future plc (LON: FUTR), which owns TechRadar, reported first-half website sessions down 15% and programmatic advertising revenue down 17%, even as directly sold advertising grew 8%. Future CEO Kevin Li Ying noted that the “search ecosystem is changing faster.”
NYT shares were quoted at $74.96 before Monday’s open, giving the company a market value of about $12.3 billion. Management expects second-quarter digital-only subscription revenue to rise 14% to 17% and digital advertising revenue to grow in the high teens, while first-quarter sales and marketing costs were already up 17.1%. However, the trade can weaken at both ends. Search changes or AI-generated summaries could answer a puzzle query without sending a reader to third-party sites; the Times itself warns that search, social-media, and AI companies can draw audiences and advertisers away.
A sharper downside would pair falling outside page views with weaker free-to-paid conversion at the Times, leaving both sides with daily production costs and fewer visits they can monetize. This asymmetry is key for investors: outside publishers can manufacture low-cost inventory from a puzzle they do not own, while the Times gets the player, the bundle pitch, and the chance to turn a few minutes of daily play into years of recurring revenue.
