Everyone knows that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so the news that LinkedIn - the world's favourite home of the humblebrag - is getting into games will come as a welcome relief for those struggling with their next self-promoting missive.
Yes, the rumours were true and now, hidden within the LinkedIn News section on desktop and the My Network tab on mobile you'll find three puzzle games each designed to take the load off and convince users to stick around a little longer, even after they've finished sharing all their good news.
The games are fast, easy and fun (unlike the rest of LinkedIn) and very much in the Wordle vein, tickling the same prefrontal cortex that's so deftly prodded by the New York Times' smash hit daily commute-filler. And indeed, just like Wordle, each of the games can only be played once per day, revealing a daily high score and stats that you can share with 'friends'.
Let's face it, the content of LinkedIn isn't known for its originality.
More ways to win at life
Here are LinkedIn's three new ways to show off and get ahead:
The first is called Pinpoint and it's a 'guess the shared theme' game very similar to Wordle's stablemate Connections but - given that there's only a single category to name - rather simpler. Five words are trotted out in turn and at the reveal of each the user has to guess what they've got in common. Needless to say, the more revealed words you need to get the answer, the lower your score and the less likely you are to share your results.
The second is Crossclimb in which players answer clues knowing that the answer word differs from the previous one by a single character. Then by placing the words in the correct order they connect the start word and end word. Tricky to start off with, but once you get the hang and the drift of the clues, it becomes a little more second-guessable.
Finally there's Queens in which everyone's favourite all-powerful chess piece must be positioned within a cube of coloured zones resulting in an unflappable web of destruction should another chess piece ever dare enter it (which it doesn't). Easily the most you-have-to-try-it-to-understand-it of the three games, but it's safe to say that it'll leave chess haters stone cold.
Hey, where'd everybody go?
“It’s all about helping you stretch and exercise your mind, but more importantly how this helps you really connect,” Laura Lorenzetti, executive editor for LinkedIn News, told CNN. "Any games that we add to the suite will make sure that they fit into that ethos and hopefully in a year people are still playing these games and talking to each other,” she said.
It's clear that the platform is not only hoping for a Wordle-style water-cooler smash but - just like social networks for mere normals - even LinkedIn has an attention span problem. Owners Microsoft (who acquired the world's least-fun social site in 2016) would doubtless prefer folks to stick around a little longer in order to consume some of the businessy delights they dangle rather than actually getting any real work done. As such (and perhaps only for now) all three games are available to any user, even those on the rubber-necking, just-passing-through free tier.
Either way, playing some puzzle games certainly makes a change from competing with your network as to who just got promoted, who just became the boss of a made-up company and who just got fired resigned in order to take up an exciting new challenge.
