Daily Celebrity Crossword Developer PuzzleSocial Announces $3M Series A

Top Grossing Digital Crossword Raises New Funding to Consolidate the Crossword Puzzle Market

NEW YORK – December 22, 2014 – PuzzleSocial, creator of the mobile game Daily Celebrity Crossword, today announced $3M in Series A funding. The round was led by new investor KiwiTech, and also included new investments from all seed stage investors, including former HBO president Thayer Bigelow, Mark Wachen of Upstage Ventures, and other leading NYC-based angels.

“The biggest challenge with investing in mobile games is that they tend to have short life cycles,” said Rakesh Gupta, CEO of KiwiTech. “Oftentimes they lose popularity just as quickly as they gain it. Daily Celebrity Crossword has successfully demonstrated to us that fresh content solves the retention problem that most games suffer from, and we are confident in this app’s ability to engage its audience on a daily basis for many years to come.”

The company has modernized traditional pen-and-paper crossword puzzles for today’s mobile world. Its app features daily themes such as “Movie Monday” (where the long answers may all be about last weekend’s blockbuster film) and allows players to challenge friends to puzzles, compete against their own best times and the daily averages, and enter into weekly tournaments. The puzzle is written daily by the most published crossword puzzle writers in the country, and co-edited by Trip Payne, star of the movie Wordplay and Amy Reynaldo, author of How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle.

Daily Celebrity Crossword is currently the #1 grossing digital crossword app and is quickly climbing the charts to become the #1 solved daily crossword puzzle of all time. With this additional funding, PuzzleSocial aims to continue bringing Daily Celebrity Crossword to the mass market.  

“Traditionally the crossword puzzle market, which is comprised of 50 million unique solvers in the US alone, has been very fragmented – with no one daily puzzle holding mass appeal,” said PuzzleSocial CEO Jeb Balise. “The world needs one fun, accessible puzzle that provides quality entertainment for puzzle junkies and casual gamers alike on their mobile device. We make that puzzle and it’s our job to make it fun and fresh 365 days a year.”

Daily Celebrity Crossword is free to download on iOS, Android, and Kindle devices.

About Puzzle Social 

PuzzleSocial is the creator of Daily Celebrity Crossword, the world’s first relevant and accessible mobile crossword puzzle. Daily Celebrity Crossword launched in May 2013 and is currently available on Facebook, iOS, Android, and Kindle devices. For more information, please visit http://www.puzzlesocial.com/.

About KiwiTech 

KiwiTech provides end-to-end digital technology solutions across a wide range of industries, including healthcare, media & entertainment, education, financial services and government. Leveraging its world-class design capability, and its deep expertise with content and databases, KiwiTech enables companies to seamlessly add mobile to their technology stack, ensuring instant access to information – anytime, anywhere and on any device. KiwiTech has quickly gained recognition as an innovator by investing in numerous start-ups and partnering with large enterprises. KiwiTech is based in Washington DC, with offices in New York, San Francisco and New Delhi. For more information please visit the KiwiTech website at http://www.kiwitech.com/.