Apple Takes on NYT with New Emoji & Genmoji Puzzle Games

An emoji panel on an iPhone keyboard
In Short
  • Apple has added a new Emoji Game to their News+ daily puzzles catalogue.
  • The game requires you to fill in the blanks and guess the word using the correct emoji suggestion.
  • It is exclusively available with the News+ subscription, which costs $12.99/ per month.

The New York Times’ collection of daily games turned out to be quite a success, and it seems like Apple wants to capture the same genie in the bottle. The Cupertino giant just came out with its own Wordle-like Emoji Game puzzle that is exclusively available with the Apple News+ subscription.

It was announced back at WWDC 2025 in June, and now Apple released it on the World Emoji Day. The puzzle shows parts of a word or a phrase along with blank spaces. Players need to drag the correct emoji to fill in the blanks. For example, if the word is DISAPPEAR, it will only show DISAP_ _ _ _ and you will need to drag a pear emoji 🍐 to complete it.

Emoji game puzzle preview
Image Credit: Apple

Of course, it isn’t going to be always that simple, and the emojis can even be used for more abstract meanings. For instance, the same pear emoji can be used in the word FRUITFUL. The game also adds Gemoji to the mix to offer custom emojis for more complicated puzzles.

As mentioned above, it will be exclusive to Apple News+, which costs $12.99 per month for the entire family. The plan also includes other popular games like Crossword, Quartiles, and Sudoku. This strategy of daily puzzles has worked out well for The New York Times with Wordle so it goes without saying that Apple wants a piece of that cake, too.

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