🎁 Merry Christmas! We have handcrafted more than a day’s worth of classic word games inspired by The New York Times for your puzzling pleasure. If you submit proof of every puzzle’s completion, you will be entered in a Christmas raffle for 🎟️ two movie tickets for any movie of Matt’s choice. Good luck!

P.S. If you like these, you can check out even more puzzles here.

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🟩 Wordle

Check out a custom Wordle puzzle by Megan “Heavy Hand” She.

🟪 Connections

Play The Ghost of Christmas Past Tense by Megan "what even is past perfect tense" She.

Play ☃️ Ice Pop by Matt “Cold Stone” Barker.

🟨 Strands

Fire up Impractical Gifts by Matt “A-Milking” Barker.

🟦 The Crossword

If you’re up for a Christmas challenge, try Making A List & Checking It Twice, Matt’s most unique crossword puzzle yet!

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Made with 💙 by M+M

Also known as “The Rebus Philbin”

Welcome to this ✨ special-edition holiday crossword puzzle, nearly every clue can be answered ✌️ two different ways! The circled squares are letters that appear in both valid answers. For all non-circled squares, select the Rebus menu option to enter two letters, one for each square in the two answers. On mobile, the button appears as an R symbol.

Important: For each rebus square, the letter pairs are ordered by which overall answer comes alphabetically first. Check out the example below.

Example: Let's say the clue is "❄️ A shape of snow". An answer pair might be SNOWBALL and SNOWCONE. You would first enter S N O W normally, and then using the Rebus feature, enter BC AO LN LE. The first letter of each letter pair is for the answer SNOWBALL, since it comes first alphabetically.

That's it! You can hit Info in the Menu to see this message again (on mobile, tap on the "i" pin symbol, or check the menu with three lines). If you're stuck or stressed, chill out ☃️ it's Christmas. Ask Matt for help! Lord knows his grandparents will need it 😅

Have fun!

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View crossword puzzle here.

Three hundred and sixty-four combined gifts.

A holiday huzzah for the December 2025 Healthy News+ newsletter.

A Halloween haunt for the October 2025 Healthy News+ newsletter. Guess the bonus theme 😜

You’ll see. I hope.

Essentially one big Connections theme.

Inspired by the 2024 Summer Olympic Games.

Pairs with Animal Kingdom (Part One), a Connections puzzle.

Pairs with Animal Kingdom (Part Two), a Strands puzzle.

The theme of this puzzle is [redacted].

Inspired by the ornaments on the Barker family Christmas 2023 tree.

Float like a butterfly, spell like a bee.

A tribute to our 2023 summer vacation on Little Sebago Lake in Maine.

The final installment of the Elemental series.

The third installment of the Elemental series.

The second installment of the Elemental series.

The first installment of the Elemental series.

Pop culture out of this world.

Just what the title says.