LinkedIn has launched a new, casual game, Mini Sudoku, for its 1.2 billion users. The Microsoft-owned professional networking site’s latest addition is a scaled-down version of the classic puzzle, designed to be completed in just two or three minutes. This is the sixth game to be introduced on the platform. The new Mini Sudoku aims to spark friendly competition among colleagues and friends, with puzzles getting progressively more difficult throughout the week.
What the company said about the new Mini Sudoku game
In an interview with CNBC, Lakshman Somasundaram, a senior director of product at the company said: “We don’t want to have a puzzle on LinkedIn that takes 20 minutes to solve, right? We’re not games for games’ sake.”LinkedIn’s creation of the game stemmed from a meeting with Japanese publisher Nikoli, known for popularising Sudoku. Last year, Somasundaram and a group of LinkedIn associate product managers visited Nikoli’s Tokyo headquarters, where they discussed puzzles with the publisher’s employees through a translator.This meeting led to weeks of collaboration between LinkedIn, Nikoli, and Thomas Snyder, a three-time World Sudoku Championship winner who has been advising LinkedIn on its gaming strategy.The team aimed to make Sudoku more approachable, experimenting with several prototypes before deciding on a board featuring six rows and six columns.“It’s very easy to just make a Sudoku grid. It’s very hard to make art in the form of Sudoku. And that’s what both Nikoli and we do. I think it’s got the potential to be the largest of the games, just because it’s going to have a lot of brand awareness from moment one,” Snyder noted. Snyder, who is the founder and CEO of Grandmaster Puzzles, a publisher of Sudoku books, holds a PhD in chemistry and is known as Dr Sudoku. He has worked on the hint feature for LinkedIn’s Mini Sudoku and created some of the puzzles. Each day’s puzzle will be accompanied by a video of Snyder demonstrating his solving process.However, this is not the first game LinkedIn has introduced. The platform added games last year to bring a sense of fun and offer users fresh ways to engage with each other.According to a company spokesperson, millions of people play LinkedIn’s games daily, with peak activity at 7 AM ET (4.30 PM IST) and Gen Z make up the largest share of players. Among the ones who play on a given day, 86% return the next day, and 82% are still playing a week later.