The Guardian today announces the launch of Guardian Puzzles - a dedicated app for crosswords and puzzles from The Guardian and The Observer.
Available across iOS and Android devices, the app will feature 15 new crosswords every week and new sudoku puzzles daily, as well as access to over 15,ooo puzzles from the Guardian archive.
Developed for crossword and puzzle enthusiasts, users can choose between quick, cryptic, speedy, quiptic, prize, everyman and weekend crosswords, and five levels of sudoku.
The app has special features including a two-player mode allowing readers to play with friends, time their game, share their scores socially, and play offline.
It also comes with useful help and clue functions and an easy to navigate calendar of the enormous Guardian puzzles archive.
Guardian crossword editor, Hugh Stephenson, said:
"Our crossword puzzles have had a hugely loyal following since they were first published in 1929. Since they went online 20 years ago, they have become among the most popular English-language puzzles in the world. This new app will make it even easier for solvers to enjoy them."
Director of digital strategy, Caspar Llewellyn Smith said:
"Guardian crosswords are a big part of our heritage, loved by print readers and users of our website and premium apps. We want to serve them better so we've now created Guardian Puzzles – a dedicated app for crosswords and puzzles including sudoku that looks really beautiful, contains our full archive of previous crosswords and is fun and easy to use (you can even play along with a friend). Like our Live and Daily apps, it's a subscription product that offers great value – and through subscribing, users will also be helping to support independent Guardian journalism."
Guardian Puzzles is available to download from the iTunes and Google Play stores with an introductory offer for one week's free trial, before a monthly subscription of £3.49 a month, or £32.99 a year (saving 20%).
The Guardian Puzzles app is the next step in the Guardian's strategy to attract two million supporters by 2022. The Guardian now receives over half of its revenues from readers, who help to fund Guardian journalism through digital and print subscriptions, by making recurring and one-off contributions to support the Guardian and through newsstand sales of the Guardian, the Observer and Guardian Weekly.
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For more information please contact: media.enquiries@theguardian.com
Notes to editors
About Guardian puzzles
The Manchester Guardian published its first cryptic puzzle in 1929, with a prize of two guineas and it has appeared regularly ever since.
Guardian puzzles have been online since 1999, helping its cryptic to become one of the most popular cryptic puzzles in the world.
The world class setters have pen-names, so that solvers can recognise their differing and unique styles.
Past setters, such as Araucaria, Bunthorne and Custos, helped develop the modern cryptic puzzle and today's setters continue to innovate with the craft.
The daily quick puzzle first appeared in January 1970.
About Guardian News & Media
Guardian News & Media (GNM) publishes theguardian.com, one of the world's leading English-language newspaper websites. Traffic from outside of the UK now represents around two-thirds of the Guardian's total digital audience. In the UK, GNM publishes the Guardian newspaper six days a week, first published in 1821, and the world's oldest Sunday newspaper, The Observer.
The Guardian is renowned for its agenda-setting journalism including the Windrush revelations, the Paradise and Panama Papers investigations as well as the Pulitzer Prize and Emmy-winning NSA revelations.