Fox News made daily puzzles part of its site with a games portal run by Playgent

A daily reason to come back

People come to Fox News for the news, and plenty of them come back more than once a day. Puzzles build a habit of their own. A reader who solves today's crossword wants tomorrow's, and that daily return is worth as much to a news site as any headline.

The habit only holds if the puzzle page behaves like the rest of the site: on time every day, with no gaps and nothing that would embarrass the brand. A daily crossword needs a new grid every day of the year, with clues that are fair and answers that check out. Regular solvers notice the moment a puzzle repeats. And anything that runs under the Fox News name needs someone on the Fox News side who can stop it before it goes out.

Doing all of that in-house means building a puzzle desk: people to source and check puzzles, a schedule that never runs dry, and engineers to keep the games fast on every phone. Most newsrooms would rather have the puzzle page without the desk.

The Fox News games portal

Playgent runs the games portal on foxnews.com, with a lineup of daily games:

• Daily Crossword. A full-size grid, new every day.
• Mini Crossword. A smaller grid for a quick solve, also new every day.
• Sudoku. The number grid every puzzle fan knows.
• Word Search. A fresh board of hidden words to find.
• Games made for Fox News. Some games in the portal are exclusive to Fox News, like Icon Match, a matching puzzle played with icons.

The two crosswords do different jobs. The full-size grid is for readers who want to settle in. The mini fits into a few spare minutes, which makes it a natural first puzzle for someone new to crosswords.

Part of the site, not a link away

The puzzles are part of foxnews.com, not a separate destination. Every game loads inside the portal, in the site's look, so readers play on a Fox News page instead of being sent somewhere else, and every visit to the puzzles is a visit to Fox News.

Playgent hosts the games, keeps them working on every screen size and reports how each one is played, so the portal runs every day without the Fox News team having to run it.

The Fox News team keeps the final say

Puzzles for Fox News go into a review pool in Playgent before they're scheduled. The Fox News team can look at what's coming up and reject anything it doesn't want to run. Each day then fills itself from the puzzles left in the pool, so nothing waits on someone to press publish, and nothing runs that the team has turned down.

Before a puzzle reaches the pool, Playgent compares its answers with every puzzle Fox News has already run. If they match one readers have seen before, the puzzle is set aside. Regular solvers get a new grid each day, not one they finished months ago.

Why Fox News chose Playgent

A puzzle page is a promise that something new will be there tomorrow, and Playgent is built to keep it. The schedule is filled ahead of time, and any gap is caught and filled automatically. Playgent hosts, monitors and updates the games, so the Fox News team spends its time on the news, not on puzzle operations.

The setup also leaves room to grow. Playgent's catalog has more than 60 games across words, numbers, logic and trivia. Each one takes a brand's fonts, colors and corners, and each goes onto a page with one snippet, so a new format doesn't mean a new vendor or a new integration.

Analytics show plays and completions for every game, every day, so the lineup can be judged on what readers actually do.

What's ahead for Fox News

The features that turn a puzzle page into a daily habit are already part of Playgent: streaks for readers who solve every day, leaderboards, and share cards for posting a result. Any of them can be switched on for the games Fox News runs today, and new formats from the catalog can join the portal with the same review flow behind them.

If you run a newsroom and want daily puzzles that are part of your site while your team keeps the final say, talk to our team.