LinkedIn Expands Into Gaming: Launches 3 New Logic Puzzles

Published by Shipra Sanganeria on May 3, 2024

Fact-checked by Kate Richards • Fact-checked by Kate Richards

LinkedIn has officially entered the world of gaming with the launch of three free “thinking-oriented” games on its platform. The logic puzzles — Pinpoint, Queens, and Crossclimb — can be found under the “News” and “My Network” tabs of LinkedIn profiles on desktop and mobile.

The Microsoft-owned professional networking site was first spotted testing games on its platform in March 2024. “We’re playing with adding puzzle-based games within the LinkedIn experience to unlock a bit of fun, deepen relationships, and hopefully spark the opportunity for conversations,” a LinkedIn spokesperson confirmed in a statement to Techcrunch.

Rolled out globally on May 1, the company is initially starting out with three Wordle-style games. The first, Pinpoint is a simple word association game, where players must guess the common category that the 5 words belong to.

The second game, Queens, is a time-based logic puzzle that shares similarities with Sudoku but doesn’t use numbers. Here a player has to place a queen emoji in every row, column, and region, without touching one another.

The third puzzle, Crossclimb, is a trivia game that is “a combination of a crossword and a word ladder.” Players guess a list of words based on a set of clues, then rearrange the words to unlock the final (more difficult) clue to win the game.

For now, these games can be played once per day and scores can be shared to users’ personal LinkedIn networks. Leaderboards can also be accessed to check rankings and high scores and to engage in conversations related to the games with the wider LinkedIn community.

According to Lakshman Somasundaram, LinkedIn’s product director, “It’s time we turn over a new leaf in how we deepen and reignite relationships at work, and put fun at the heart of it.”

LinkedIn is not the first company to use gaming to refresh and boost user engagement. For instance, with the 2022 acquisition of Wordle, The New York Times reportedly saw tens of millions of new players across its games and puzzle section.