What Makes a Digital Puzzle Platform Engaging for News Publishers | Digital Marmalade [Skip to main content](#main-content) Sticky Puzzles is a digital puzzle platform. Digital Marmalade built it. It lets news publishers add crosswords, word games and number puzzles to their site. They don't need to build any of it themselves. It already powers the puzzles on [The Telegraph](https://claude.ai/case-studies/the-telegraph/revolutionising-digital-puzzle-platforms). That's one of the toughest readerships in UK publishing. Puzzles are one of the best engagement tools a news site has. A reader might open a news story once. They may never come back. A good puzzle gets opened every day. Often before anything else on the site. Why a daily habit beats a big spike ----------------------------------- A viral article brings a rush of new visitors. Most never return. A fun puzzle brings the same reader back. At the same time, day after day. That's the number publishers care about most. Not how many people visited once. How many have a reason to come back tomorrow. This is also why puzzles work well behind a paywall. Some readers will never pay for "one more article." Many will pay to protect a streak. It's a different kind of pull. More like a habit than a one-off buy. What makes a puzzle platform good --------------------------------- We've built and run Sticky Puzzles for several publishers. A few things keep coming up. - Speed, even under heavy traffic. Puzzle traffic spikes at set times each day. Morning, lunch and last thing at night. A slow platform loses readers fast. - Progress that follows you. A reader might start a crossword on the train. Then finish it on a tablet at home. If progress doesn't follow them, the habit breaks. - Real variety in difficulty. A good platform suits casual solvers and serious fans. From the same code. - Fair puzzle generation. Word games need careful handling. Things like decoy words and shuffling. Get this wrong and loyal solvers notice fast. - A brand feel that fits. The puzzle should feel part of the site. Not a box dropped in from somewhere else. Build it yourself, or use one that's already proven --------------------------------------------------- Most publishers don't have a team whose full job is puzzles. That's often where in-house plans run into trouble. A platform works fine at launch. Then small problems pile up. Nobody has time to fix them properly. Sticky Puzzles exists because we've solved these problems many times. For real publishing clients. That means you get a platform already tested by tough readers. Not one still being fixed after launch. Weighing up build versus buy? Talk to us before you spend engineering time on it. [Find out more about Sticky Puzzles](https://www.stickypuzzles.com/). [ Back to news ](/news) July 2026 ### [ How to Modernise a Legacy Web Platform Without Losing User Trust ](https://www.digitalmarmalade.co.uk/news/how-to-modernise-a-legacy-web-platform-without-losing-user-trust) Read more July 2026 ### [ Why Cybersecurity Consultancies Need More Than Point-in-Time Assessments ](https://www.digitalmarmalade.co.uk/news/why-cybersecurity-consultancies-need-more-than-point-in-time-assessments) Read more July 2026 ### [ Software Development Since 1997: What Hasn't Changed ](https://www.digitalmarmalade.co.uk/news/software-development-since-1997-what-hasnt-changed) Read more Allow cookies