{"id":895961,"date":"2026-04-01T07:12:04","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T12:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/01\/hes-linkedins-first-puzzlemaster-heres-how-his-games-benefit-their-business-and-your-brain\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T07:12:04","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T12:12:04","slug":"hes-linkedins-first-puzzlemaster-heres-how-his-games-benefit-their-business-and-your-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/01\/hes-linkedins-first-puzzlemaster-heres-how-his-games-benefit-their-business-and-your-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"He\u2019s LinkedIn\u2019s First Puzzlemaster. Here\u2019s How His Games Benefit Their Business \u2014 and Your Brain."},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<h2>Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>LinkedIn has hired three-time world Sudoku champion Thomas Snyder as its first-ever principal puzzlemaster.<\/li>\n<li>Snyder has created more than 10,000 puzzles across his career, and intends for LinkedIn games to be a daily brain warm-up that could lead to fun discussions with colleagues.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>LinkedIn views games as part of a \u201cvery intentional path\u201d that the platform has taken, Laksh Somasundaram, senior director of product at LinkedIn, told Business Insider. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>LinkedIn offers members access to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/games\/\">free puzzles<\/a> as part of a deliberate engagement strategy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The architect behind LinkedIn\u2019s puzzle push is Thomas Snyder, a three-time world Sudoku champion and longtime creator of logic puzzles, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/meet-the-puzzlemaster-behind-linkedin-games-zip-and-patches-2026-3\">Business Insider<\/a> recently reported. Before joining LinkedIn full-time in October as its first-ever principal puzzlemaster, he had already authored or edited over 10,000 games across formats, from pen-and-paper magazines to digital platforms.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The 46-year-old now crafts or edits logic games for LinkedIn\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/about.linkedin.com\/\">more than one billion members<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>LinkedIn <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pulse\/how-play-games-linkedin-seriously-michaelaalexis-gqwre\/\">debuted games in 2024<\/a> and now offers seven puzzles, which users can access daily. Games include <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/games\/zip\/\">Zip<\/a>, where users draw a single path through a grid to connect numbered dots in order, and <a href=\"https:\/\/news.linkedin.com\/2026\/LinkedIn-Announces-Patches-A-New-Thinking-Oriented-Game-Inspired-by-Zip\/LinkedIn-Announces-Patches-A-New-Thinking-Oriented-Game-Inspired-by-Zip\">Patches<\/a>, where players fill a grid with rectangles and squares.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The puzzles have quickly become popular; 80% of users who play a game return the following day, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.socialmediatoday.com\/news\/linkedin-puzzle-games-performance-summary\/736125\/\">LinkedIn<\/a>. Players can tap into a scoreboard to see how quickly they solved a puzzle compared to other players in their network, adding a competitive element.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"h-snyder-s-beginnings\">Snyder\u2019s beginnings<\/h2>\n<p>Snyder <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/tmsnyder\/\">started his career<\/a> in biotechnology after completing a Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard University. He spent over a decade leading research groups dedicated to disease detection, making puzzles on the side as a hobby.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In 2012, he left research to go full-time on his own puzzle business, Grandmaster Puzzles. Within a year, the company scored a regular feature in Penny Dell Puzzles, a puzzle magazine publisher, per Business Insider. Companies like Netflix and LinkedIn soon began reaching out to him, asking for content.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Though making and solving puzzles has always been Snyder\u2019s \u201cfavorite thing to do,\u201d he still has trouble thinking of the process as a career. \u201cIt\u2019s been tricky to think that puzzles can be a full profession,\u201d he told Business Insider.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Snyder acknowledged that \u201cLinkedIn isn\u2019t a games company\u201d \u2014 but said that the workplace connection site benefits from games \u201cas a means of fun.\u201d He told Business Insider that he intends for LinkedIn games to be a daily brain warm-up that could lead to fun discussions with colleagues.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He added that every puzzle LinkedIn publishes is created by a human author.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"h-why-linkedin-is-making-a-push-into-games\">Why LinkedIn is making a push into games<\/h2>\n<p>LinkedIn views games as part of a broader engagement strategy. Platforms add games to keep users engaged and coming back, Michael Pachter, a games-industry analyst at Wedbush Securities, told Business Insider. It works because \u201cthe achievement\u201d of completing the puzzle and achieving a high score in comparison to other players \u201cvalidates that the time was well spent,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Laksh Somasundaram, senior director of product at LinkedIn, told Business Insider that puzzles are part of a \u201cvery intentional path\u201d that the platform has taken. \u201cWhen we look at the world\u2019s best workplaces and how connections and bonds are formed between colleagues, fun is always a core part of that,\u201d Somasundaram told the outlet.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Games have recently become an integral part of media companies. For example, The New York Times <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/01\/31\/business\/media\/new-york-times-wordle.html\">acquired<\/a> Wordle, the word puzzle game, in 2022 and credited the game with attracting <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2022\/05\/04\/wordle-new-york-times-user-growth\/\">millions of new users<\/a> to its digital platform.<\/p>\n<p>Joshua Lee, a software engineer based in New York, wrote in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/posts\/joshua-lee-53400b1a0_b2bsaas-linkedingames-zip-ugcPost-7421570824656191489-RQfk\/\">a recent LinkedIn post<\/a> that he had completed a one-year streak playing LinkedIn games.\u00a0He said that the benefits of playing games daily from a user\u2019s perspective were increased problem-solving skills and dedication. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cTurns out, building delightful software and solving daily puzzles aren\u2019t that different,\u201d Lee wrote.\u00a0 \u201cBoth require patience, deliberate pattern recognition and the relentless desire to wake up and tackle a new problem every day.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/business-news\/heres-how-hes-shaping-linkedins-puzzle-game\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><br \/>\n Sherin Shibu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Key Takeaways LinkedIn has hired three-time world Sudoku champion Thomas Snyder as its first-ever principal puzzlemaster. Snyder has created more than 10,000 puzzles across his career, and intends for LinkedIn games to be a daily brain warm-up that could lead to fun discussions with colleagues.\u00a0 LinkedIn views games as part of a \u201cvery intentional path\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":895962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38479,67281],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-895961","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hes","8":"category-linkedins"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=895961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/895962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=895961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=895961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=895961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}