675. Has the New York Times Become a Games Company?

Where this was said

Human-Made Puzzles vs. AI — and Why Connections Stumps the Machines

At 46:42 · chapter starts 46:40

Dubner asks about AI strategy. Knight's answer is the opposite of most tech executives': NYT Games is doubling down on human-made puzzles. The rationale has two prongs. First, consumers are perceptive — they can sniff out a machine-made game, just as Wordle clones proliferated online without capturing the same feeling. Second, human curation matters at scale: Tracy Bennett's word choices, the discussion of double letters, the cadence of the week's puzzle selections — all of this is invisible but felt. The punchline is Connections: AI companies have told the Times their models still cannot reliably solve it. The misdirects, the human trickery, are too hard to replicate. And there's a brand dimension too: beating a NYT puzzle feels like beating 'a New York Times human,' not just any algorithm.

“

We've spoken to AI companies that say that their models don't know how to solve Connections still. There's something about the misdirects and just the way that that puzzle tries to trick you that is really special and hard to replicate.

Jonathan Knight

675. Has the New York Times Become a Ga…

♥ 0

“

If you beat a New York Times puzzle, you're not just beating any human, you're beating, like, a New York Times human, which gives you a sort of satisfaction, right? That you're a little smarter.

Jonathan Knight

675. Has the New York Times Become a Ga…

♥ 0