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When New York Times technology workers went on strike in November 2024, they did not merely ask readers to stop playing Wordle and Connections. They built replacements: Strikle, Connections: Strike Edition, and a collection of other strike-themed games designed to keep the daily-puzzle ritual alive while directing readers away from Times-owned products.
The games were part of a digital picket line. The Times Tech Guild, which represented more than 600 technology workers, asked supporters not to play the Times’ games or use the NYT Cooking app during the strike. The guild’s alternatives made the protest unusually tangible: the workers were using software, games, and internet culture as tools of labor solidarity.
What were Strikle and Connections: Strike Edition?
Strikle was the closest substitute for Wordle. It used the familiar short-form word-guessing concept, but wrapped the experience in strike-related themes. Connections: Strike Edition similarly adapted the category-grouping format associated with Connections.
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These were not official New York Times products, licensed spin-offs, or ordinary fan projects. They were presented as workers’ and supporters’ own riffs on the games that the Tech Guild helped build and maintain. Contemporary coverage described them as alternatives for readers who wanted to honor the digital picket line without giving up the puzzle habit. The Guild Builds page also explicitly said that the projects were built by union members and supporters, were not affiliated with The New York Times Company, and might contain bugs.
That disclaimer mattered. The games were protest projects, not products operating on the Times’ normal commercial infrastructure. Their purpose was less to reproduce every feature of the Times games than to give supporters something playful to do while withholding attention from the originals.
The wider Guild Builds collection
Strikle and Connections: Strike Edition received the most attention because they were recognizable alternatives to the Times’ best-known daily games. The Guild Builds page also listed projects including:
- Word Search
- Match Strike
- Frogger 8th Ave
- Scabby’s Fair Contract Builder
- STRIKEMAN
- Trivia and Jokes
- Mini Crossword: Strike Edition
- Guild Adventure
- Wide Guild Brick Breaker
The collection turned a labor dispute into an interactive communication campaign. Visitors could encounter the guild’s message through puzzles, arcade-style games, trivia, and other familiar formats instead of through a conventional statement alone.
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Why did the Times Tech Guild strike?
The strike began at 12:01 a.m. Eastern on November 4, 2024, immediately before Election Day. The timing was significant because the Times was preparing high-traffic election coverage, including its election forecast “needle.” The guild had authorized the strike in September, with the NewsGuild reporting that more than 95 percent of members supported authorization.
The dispute followed more than two years of bargaining over the guild’s first contract. According to the guild and the NewsGuild, major disagreements included:
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- Hybrid and remote work: protections for flexible work arrangements and limits on unilateral return-to-office changes;
- Just cause: protection against arbitrary discipline or termination;
- Subcontracting: limits and safeguards around assigning work to outside contractors;
- Pay equity and fair compensation;
- Workplace procedures: greater transparency and protections concerning performance, advancement, and related employment decisions.
The NewsGuild also accused Times management of unfair labor practices, including imposing return-to-office requirements without bargaining and intimidating workers about strike participation. Those were the union’s allegations at the time, not findings that should be presented without attribution.
The bargaining unit included software engineers, product managers, data analysts, project managers, designers, and other digital-product employees. Their work supported the Times website, mobile applications, election coverage, games, Cooking, and other digital systems. That does not mean the striking technology workers were necessarily the editorial puzzle constructors who wrote every Wordle or Connections answer. Their role was building and maintaining the technology and products through which those experiences reached readers.
Why ask readers to stop playing games?
The guild called its request a “digital picket line.” Instead of asking consumers to avoid a factory-made product or stay away from a physical business, it asked readers to withhold visits, plays, and app usage from Times-owned digital products.
The request specifically included popular Times games such as Wordle and Connections, as well as the NYT Cooking app. The strategy recognized that digital products depend on participation and attention. A reader opening a game contributes to the visibility and engagement of the product even if no purchase is made at that moment.
At the same time, the guild understood that people might want to preserve the social routine of sharing a score or solving a puzzle. Strikle and Connections: Strike Edition offered a way to redirect that behavior: keep playing, but play something created in support of the workers rather than using the Times’ products during the strike.
How long did the strike last?
The strike ended on November 11, 2024, after roughly one week. Workers returned to their jobs while negotiations continued. Contemporary reporting said the stoppage did not prevent the Times from producing its election coverage, although the action was intended to show how much the company’s technology workers contributed to the operation of its digital products.
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The dispute later moved toward a settlement. On December 11, 2024, the NewsGuild announced a tentative three-year agreement that included:
- just-cause job protections;
- guaranteed wage increases of up to 8.25 percent over the life of the contract;
- on-call compensation;
- guardrails around variable compensation;
- visa-related protections;
- flexible hybrid-work language;
- greater transparency around performance reviews and career growth.
The guild’s current history page says members ratified their first contract in December 2024. It lists just cause, guaranteed salary minimums and annual raises, on-call pay, remote-work protections and return-to-office schedules, and gender-identity protections among the gains. In other words, the strike-themed games were an episode in a dispute that ultimately produced the Tech Guild’s first contract—not an ongoing substitute for a current labor action.
Can you still play the strike-themed games?
The Guild Builds projects were published during the November 2024 strike campaign, particularly on November 6 and 7. Their availability and functionality may change because they were independent protest projects rather than a permanently maintained commercial game service. The original collection and its disclaimer are documented on the official Guild Builds page.
It is also important not to confuse the guild’s alternatives with official Times games. The NYT Games subscription and Games app are digital Times services, and the guild’s strike request specifically asked supporters not to use them during the action.
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Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.The larger significance of the protest
The unusual part of the story was not simply that striking workers made games. It was that the games directly reflected the workers’ relationship to the products at issue. The Tech Guild’s members helped build the systems that made the Times’ digital journalism, games, apps, and interactive features function. By creating Strikle and Connections: Strike Edition, they used that technical and cultural knowledge to make the digital picket line understandable to the public.
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The result was a labor protest with its own playable interface. Readers were asked to recognize that the familiar daily puzzle was not just an isolated piece of content: it depended on engineers, designers, product managers, analysts, project managers, and other technology staff. The eventual December 2024 ratification of the first contract gave the campaign a resolution that the initial strike-week games, viewed alone, could not show.
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Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteBottom line: Strikle and Connections: Strike Edition were unofficial, strike-themed alternatives created by New York Times Tech Guild members and supporters during the November 2024 strike. They helped turn a request to skip Times games into a visible digital protest. The strike ended after about a week, and the guild later ratified its first contract in December 2024.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was Strikle?
Strikle was a strike-themed, Wordle-style word-guessing game created by New York Times Tech Guild members and supporters during the 2024 strike. It was unofficial and unaffiliated with The New York Times Company.
What was Connections: Strike Edition?
Connections: Strike Edition was an unofficial labor-themed adaptation of the category-grouping format associated with the Times’ Connections game. It was part of the Guild Builds collection published during the strike.
When did the New York Times Tech Guild strike end?
The Times Tech Guild strike began at 12:01 a.m. Eastern on November 4, 2024, and ended on November 11, 2024. The guild’s first contract was later ratified in December 2024, according to its official history page.
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The Bottom Line
Bottom line: Strikle and Connections: Strike Edition were unofficial, strike-themed alternatives created by New York Times Tech Guild members and supporters during the November 2024 strike. They helped turn a request to skip Times games into a visible digital protest. The strike ended after about a week, and the guild later ratified its first contract in December 2024.
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