Ynet built a daily puzzles destination fully in Hebrew with Playgent

Puzzles are built for English first

Most puzzle games are made in English first, and translating the buttons doesn't make a Hebrew game. Hebrew reads right to left, so boards, menus, keyboards and timers all have to flip. Five letters change shape at the end of a word, so a word grid has to know where every word ends.

Word games also need word lists, and that's where translation breaks down. A Hebrew word game needs real Hebrew words that readers know, without names, slang or anything a news site wouldn't print. Trivia needs questions written in Hebrew, not translated after the fact.

Number games need care too. The instructions, the difficulty names and the end screens all have to read naturally in Hebrew, not like a manual translated word for word.

For Israel's largest news site, a half-translated games page would be worse than none.

What Ynet runs on Playgent

Ynet's games section is fully in Hebrew and organized in four rows:

• Featured. Headline games, from the Hebrew word of the day to sudoku, word search and trivia.
• Daily challenges. New word puzzles, picture games and quizzes every day, from a word wheel to true or false.
• Numbers and logic. Sudoku, kakuro and everything in between.
• Casual. Solitaire, mahjong and other games for downtime.

Word games carry much of the daily lineup: the word of the day, word searches, a word wheel, crossing-word grids and word chains, each with new content every day. Trivia and picture games round it out, from questions about who's who to guessing a dish or an athlete from a picture puzzle.

Number and logic games come with difficulty levels, from mini to extreme on sudoku, and the section remembers each reader's choice for every game. Readers can also switch a game's look or keep Ynet's own colors, and game events flow into Ynet's own analytics.

Hebrew from the ground up

Playgent built the Hebrew versions instead of translating English ones. The word games draw on Hebrew word lists made for them: common words, checked against a Hebrew spelling dictionary, with names, loanwords and offensive words filtered out. Final letter forms appear only where they belong, at the end of a word.

Before launch, each word puzzle generator was run through a full year of daily puzzles with the game's own solver, so every puzzle on the schedule can be solved. Menus, buttons, instructions and end screens are in Hebrew as well.

Why Ynet chose Playgent

A games section only works if it's fresh every day, and Ynet didn't have to build a puzzle desk to get there. Playgent generates the puzzles, checks them and keeps the schedule full, and runs the section day to day: new content, fixes and new games.

Every game carries Ynet's own theme, set once and applied across the catalog, and each goes onto a page with a single snippet. With more than 60 games in Playgent's catalog across words, numbers, logic and trivia, the section can keep growing without a new integration.

Readers play on Ynet, under the Ynet name, instead of leaving to play somewhere else.

What's ahead for Ynet

The Hebrew word lists and solvers built for Ynet can carry new word formats as they join the catalog, and the right-to-left work behind the section is now part of the platform for any game that comes next. Streaks, leaderboards and share cards can turn a daily visit into a daily habit. And Playgent Studio, where a team creates a game by chatting with AI, opens the door to games built around the day's stories.

If you publish in Hebrew or another language most puzzle games skip, and want daily games that read naturally to your audience, talk to our team.