Apple is introducing new reasons to upgrade to Apple News+: other games, a subscription news offering. On Thursday, the company announced the addition of emoji games, an original title that will take part in other games, including crossword puzzles, crossword mini, snok and word game quartiles, in both the United States and Canada.
As the New York Times and LinkedIn discovered, bundled games with other services have proven to be a successful strategy to attract users and keep them engaged. Apple doesn't share user numbers around games, but many say they subscribe to News+ just for puzzles.
Image credit: Apple
Released to match World Emoji Day, the new emoji game is some logic inspired by the way emojis use them to communicate with each other. In this daily game, players try to solve phrases using emojis, with the goal of completing the puzzle with as few movements as possible.
For example, if the word “Shows” appears in a puzzle, the word “AP” may be followed by four white spaces. Then, drag emojis to the blanks for drugs and complete the words. Of course, phrases in emoji games become a bit harder to guess. Furthermore, the emojis needed to solve puzzles are often seen in emoji combinations and some with a bit of abstract thinking to come up with answers. Emoji words can also be used to fill in blank spaces with other letters between them.
If you are confused, you can reveal the clues under the phrase, but this will take one of the movements.
Image credit: Apple
There are multiple phrases to solve each day to complete the complete puzzle. Finishing with six moves is considered a perfect score, and the leaderboard helps you track streaks and your scores' comparisons with friends and other users. Future iOS 26 allows you to challenge your friends to use the new Games app.
To make the game more Apple-specific, we will leverage custom emojis created using the recently introduced Genmoji or the company's AI, Apple Intelligence. This expands the available emojis beyond the 2,000 emojis that emojis ship using emoji keyboards. For example, you might see the blender's genmoji and tomato emoji to create the word “puree.”
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The game is built by Apple, and the puzzles are designed in collaboration with a third-party Puzzle Society (now Gocomics). This game has been edited by Apple Puzzle Editors. It is now deployed to Apple News+ subscribers in the US and Canada on iPhones, iPads, and Macs. (People on iOS 18.4 and later do not need to update the app to access the game, but older versions of users do.)
News+ Subscription comes with access to Apple News+ Food, which saves over 400 premium publishers, narrated audio, local news, sports and, more recently, recipes.