Puzzlers gather 'round the digital water cooler to talk daily games

It's hard to find water-cooler TV anymore in the same way it once existed. That's partly because it's hard to find water coolers, and because fewer people even work in offices. But it's also because TV has fragmented and spread out in time, and audiences — especially same-night live audiences — are much, much smaller. Fortunately, social media has found at least one way to scratch at least some of the same itches: the daily puzzle habit.

There have always been "do the NYT crossword and talk. It was an indie game, similar to lots of old games and even , but everybody seemed to agree that one of its genius moves was to make it very easy to share your result without spoiling the answer for anybody who hadn't played yet. Regrettably for those of us who prefer for no one outlet to own too much of anything, shortly after it became popular and folded it into their puzzles app, along with the crossword and Spelling Bee, which debuted in 2018 and also has a healthy online chatter component, particularly over which words were allowed and which ones weren't.