Dear readers,
The NYT Tech Guild is on strike.
From The Guardian:
The Guild is asking that readers honor their picket line by boycotting the Times’ selection of games, including Wordle and the daily digital crossword, and to avoid other digital extensions such as the Cooking app.
Annie Shields, a campaign lead for the News Guild of New York, encouraged people to sacrifice their streaks in the wildly popular Wordle and Connections games in order to support the strike.
You can read more about the strike here (nyguild.org).
Since the picket line is "digital," it would appear to apply only to Games solved in the NYT digital environment—basically anything you solve on your phone or on the NYT website per se. If you get the puzzle in an actual dead-tree newspaper, or if you solve it outside the NYT's proprietary environment (via a third-party app, as I do), then technically you're not crossing the picket line by solving. Still, my blog is going dark today, in solidarity with the striking workers, and I'm asking readers to consider honoring the digital picket line by not using the Games app (or the Cooking app) at all until the strike is resolved. No Spelling Bee, no Connections ... none of it. My morning Wordle ritual is very important to me, but ... I'll survive, I assume.
Maybe the strike will be resolved today in time for Election Night coverage. Let's hope. At any rate, this blog will return to normal operations tomorrow, though with daily reminders about the Tech Guild strike and the digital picket line.
Feel free to discuss the puzzle in the Comments. Take care, and ... well, vote, obviously.
See you tomorrow,
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]