Learn how to play new NYT-style crossword puzzles—both small 5×5 puzzles and large 15×15 ones—every day on your iPhone, iPad and Mac.
This is a new feature available to Apple News+ subscribers on their iPhone, iPad and Mac with iOS and iPadOS 17.0 and macOS Sonoma 14.0 and later.
Don’t worry about getting stuck beacuse you can easily reveal squares, words or an entire crossword. You’ll receive virtual prizes for solving puzzles and be treated to a confetti celebratory animation if you solve a puzzle without checking sources.
Crossword puzzles have three difficulty levels—easy, moderate and challenging. Use the Share menu to learn more about each puzzle, including who authored it, and share it with friends and family through Messages, Mail and more.
How to play crossword puzzles on Apple News
Importantly, only Apple News+ and Apple One subscribers have access to these crossword puzzles. To start playing on an iPhone or iPad, click the Following tab and choose Puzzles. Alternatively, select the Today tab and hit the Puzzles group.
On your Mac, click Puzzles under Apple News in the sidebar. From there, select a desired daily puzzle. To play a smaller 5×5 puzzle on an iPhone, iPad or Mac, choose Crossword or hit the Crossword Mini option for a 15×15 one.
You can also solve prior puzzles from the archive. To follow the feed for the selected puzzle type, hit the … (More) button and choose Follow from the menu. You’ll find new puzzles within a Puzzles category in the Following section.
To favorite a puzzle from there, choose Edit and then hit the Add Favorite button next to a puzzle type and select Done. To remove the Puzzles group from the Today view, choose the Block option from the menu instead.
Helpful puzzle settings
You get several options in the puzzle settings that let you show or hide the puzzle timer, highlight linked clues, skip filled squares and more.
If you get stuck, you can check a square, a word or an entire puzzle for any incorrect letters or enable a feature that automatically marks wrong letters with a slash.
To get alerted of new puzzles, go to Following and scroll to the bottom, select Notifications & Email below Manage and then enable notifications for Puzzles.
Countries where Apple News+ serves crossword puzzles
The daily NYT-style crossword puzzles launched alongside the iOS 17, iPadOS 17 and macOS Sonoma updates in September 2023 in the United States.
At the time of writing, they were unavailable in other countries. When Apple localizes crossword puzzles for other markets, it will list them on the iOS and iPadOS 17 Feature Availability and macOS Feature Availability webpages.
Canadian customers who are testing early bets of iOS 17.1, iPadOS 17.1 and macOS Sonoma 14.1 saw the Puzzle section in their News app. It looks like those updates will bring puzzles on News+ to users in Canada when they launch to the public.