Ah see I stopped playing or even looking at it when the NYT bought it. At the time, that was the assumption since their other games are behind the paywall.

Instead, loading it up right now, it just looks like they have insanely large ads taking over 1/3 of the vertical space on lyn1440p monitor and forcing me to scroll to even see the full on screen keyboard.

Pretty shit UX there, as expected from every news site in the modern age.