Meet Jonathan Knight: The guy who runs Wordle, Spelling Bee, and The Crossword

It would be D-E-L-T-A if there was a five-letter Wordle solution.

Delta and the New York Times are giving all Times puzzles to Delta SkyMiles Members with free wi-fi.

It's an awesome way for a whole new audience to be introduced to New York Times games. We hope that they will have a deeper relationship after the flight.

The games are not going to go directly on the back of a seat. You can log into the Delta portal on your phone, use your SkyMiles account, or make a free one, and you will have access to the games.

Knight talked about the partnership with Delta, the competitive nature of the Mini Crossword, and more in an interview.

Mashable: Is Delta going to offer all the games from the Times or just Wordle and The Crossword?

Our full offer should be it. You're going to go to the games section of the New York Times. You will have free access to all of our games if you are a SkyMiles member. Some of our games are free. Spelling Bee is going to be the first thing we do. You will get full access to the full Spelling Bee if you subscribe.

Are you familiar with how many people battle with the Mini Crossword? 

How many people fight it? Do you want to compare their scores? I agree.

I play it with my partner every single morning and lately he's been beating me. I was wondering if you could fix that.

I will look at what I can do.

The Minis is one of the most popular games in the world and has a Leaderboard. We made a few small changes to the app to make it easier to find the top players. When you finish the Mini, there is a button that tells you to check it out. More visibility will be brought to that feature.

Do you compare your score with anyone?

I compare my score to the one of our executive producer, who is very competitive, every morning. We were at one minute, 12 each.

How about the Wordle? Do you always play?

The Wordle is done by me. I ended my streak on New Year's Eve. I started a new streak. I usually do 30-40, 40, 50 days in a row and then I'll miss something.

Have you sold any movie rights to Wordle?

We did not sell the movie rights to Wordle.

Is Wordle dead?

The level of engagement on Wordle is still quite high. People ask if it's over. The audience fell a bit from its height. We have a large audience who play the game every day and share it with their friends. The audience has held up well, and we've introduced this new audience to our other products.

What's your starting word? 

I read through a few words. S-T-A-R-E is a good start to the word. If I'm feeling particularly adventurous, I will do variations on that.

Does an editor actively choose the word every day? 

That is a difficult answer. When we acquired the game from Josh Wardle, a programmer based out of New York who made the game, he had to come up with a bunch of words. We haven't talked publicly about how he picked those words, but it wasn't random. He baked them in because he wanted them to be common words.

The New York Times mostly uses Josh's original word set. We did not change everything. The game needs to be faithful to its original success. The Wordle editor will be in there to fine- tune. At Thanksgiving, we had a lot of fun using the word feast. That was the first thing we did. We keep an eye out for anything that may be offensive. The game should be fun for everyone and not hurt anyone's feelings. The Wordle editor does a lot of that.

Speaking of doing no harm, there was recent controversy with the crossword puzzle [in the shape of a swastika]. How do you deal with sort of the backlash to that?

Our games are intended to bring joy to people and be diversion from the news. The goal is to have fun. The rules of crossword grids are that they have radial symmetry. The grid requires it. Margaret Farrar, the first editor of the New York Times, set down a rule that has been followed ever since. It's obvious that any resemblance is not intentional. It was a pity that it was seen that way.