I know I'm preaching to the choir here but I'm really surprised by how bad the UX is in many of the NYT games. Manipulating the dominoes in Pips just feels awkward and buggy.

And I know making games is difficult, but 1. games are a really significant portion of their subscription income, 2. there's obviously a lot of talent working at the Times (looking at their data vis stuff for example) 3. these games are (deliberately) simple, so why not iterate a bit more on making the few moving parts feel good?

Like, I think there's competent developers working at the Times. And building a pleasant, robust version of these simple games for one of the most prestigious employers in the world seems like it would be a really interesting and stimulating job. So I'd expect better results.

Also: I think this looks great and that your version is actually a bit nicer to use. Well done!

They are all webviews (except the crossword) now, so they're limited to what they can figure out in JS/CSS. That said, it could definitely be better even within those constraints.

Spelling Bee UX got noticeably worse when they switched it. Little things, like if you switch in and out of the app (say, using the official hints page), it ignores your first tap now.

Thank you for your encouragement. I have been enriching the website's content around the theme of Domino Game these days. (But there are too few Domino games available online, and many of them are very similar)

[dead]