It's probably a similar user base to the daily NYT mini crossword. I can imagine it having a similar pay structure too -- free daily, paid archive.

The odd thing is they are not buying any IP.

The game itself is a clone of other games decades earlier, and the name is also non original.

Still not sure what they bought.

If they kept everything just about as is except maybe a small NYT logo at the top and an update of the complete screen, I.e. "Next word in 13 hrs 37 minutes; meanwhile try our crosswords (enticing link)" then that would be a big win.

> My guess is they've been hearing about it a ton from their crossword userbase and wanted the traffic, users, and IP.

I'm sure that they've been hearing a lot about it internally from their own crossword people as well. This probably had a lot of internal buy-in.