The Publishers Problem – and the puzzles that can solve it
Most publishers lose the fight for attention: readers show up for one article, then leave. Will they come back? Without a strong reason to come back, tomorrow they might go to a different publisher or content site. How do you keep them on yours?
Some large publishers have figured that puzzles turn out to be a genuinely effective, low-cost way to build a returning-reader habit.
The tools that exist for smaller publishers to do this themselves, though, are either aimed at enterprise buyers, or just do not offer enough value for money. This is true for platforms like WordPress and for other platforms.
Introducing EV-Puzzles
EV-Puzzles is our Puzzles WordPress Plugin, with a Free and a Pro version, launched under our entreveloper.com website.
It makes easy to add puzzles, such as Crosswords and Word Search, to any WordPress site, and keep readers entertained. Puzzles can be created manually or with AI assistance.
The free version has full features. Users can create puzzles from a word list, typed manually, or generated by AI using a dependency of the plugin on another, also ours, free agentic and generative AI WordPress plugin.
To learn more about how to install and use the free version of the plugin, visit this post on entreveloper.com.
I Like Free, What Else Is In Pro?
The key here is AI Automation! While the free version is good, and allows users to create puzzles from word lists and existing posts, EV-Crosswords Pro generates both a crossword and a word search every time you publish a new post, straight from that post’s own content — using whatever AI provider you’ve already connected (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, or your own Ollama instance) — and appends them directly to the article. There is no need to create a separate “today’s puzzle” page to build traffic for it.
On top of that, Pro adds reader streaks and a leaderboard tied specifically to completing a site’s daily puzzle, and retention analytics that tell a publisher whether puzzle-players are actually coming back.
There is a bit more about this here.
What Is Next?
This product is in active development and new puzzles, new features, and improvements will become available in future releases. Watch this space if you are interested. For readers looking for ways to generate income online, using the plugin to assist you with keeping readers around on a new website you could create on a given niche knowledge area, might be something to consider. We will also launch soon an affiliate program for this and other products.
Thank you for reading.
