Apple is following the lead of The New York Times, adding the game to its news service.

The New York Times hosts Wordle, Connections and Spelling Bee among other games, and at least 1 report shows that people spend more time on the Times gaming app than on the news app, although Apple may not have reached that point yet, the newly released iOS17.5 update has been released. Now, we're adding a new game for Apple News Plus subscribers.

Joining the crossword puzzle, which was added to last year's News Plus, is a new word game quartile that challenges players to spell words with tiles containing two to four letters. The new quartile game posted the day so far and you find it in the puzzle section of the News app on your phone after updating to iOS17.5 This is not the only one added to Apple News Plus with the latest iOS update

. iOS 17.5 also adds an offline mode, which automatically downloads and reads content to your phone when it's not connected to Wi-Fi or your phone.

I've spent a bit of time on Apple News Plus running on iOS 17.5. Here we take a closer look at both new features.

The Quartiles game could become a star attraction for Apple News Plus subscribers on iOS 17.5 given the popularity of crosswords since it was added in last fall's iOS 17 release. Players are collecting points for each word that can be formed from 4x5 grid tiles.

Each tile contains at least two characters and contains four characters. You tap the tiles to combine them into words. The longer words using more tiles, the goal is to find the combination of 5 4 tiles contained in each puzzle and score the most points. These are the titular quartiles that bring the most points.

In addition to forming words, your goal is to accumulate as many points as possible so that you can reach the expert level of 100 points, which is why you pay to accumulate two-tile words along with these four-tile quartiles to help them score your final.

Speaking of scores, the interquartile is integrated with Apple's Game Center, so you can also see how the interquartile results compare to the results of friends who are also subscribers to Apple News Plus, and how they played on the global scoreboard.

The interquartile, for now, is limited to Apple News Plus subscribers in the United States and Canada.

About a month ago, I found myself on my plane flight with my iPhone in airplane mode and didn't want to pay for a sketchy in-flight Wi-Fi. In that case, a new offline mode added to Apple News Plus with iOS 17.5 came in handy, allowing you to read offloaded news stories, read audio stories, and play games without a connection.

In offline mode, the news app uses the available space on your iPhone to update the relevant content— articles, magazine issues, puzzles and audio briefs When you return online, News Plus updates the offline content with updated stories.

The best thing about this feature is that you don't have to do anything — it's all done in the background. However, if you want, you can go to the Settings app, select the news app and specify the type of content you do not want to do and for offline mode. You can also turn this feature off if you want.

In its News Plus announcement, Apple says offline content "will be optimized to maximize space" on your iPhone and iPad. In my experience, when I turn on airplane mode and test the feature, I may not see the images contained in Apple News stories when in offline mode.

Both Quartile and offline mode are exclusive additions for Apple News Plus subscribers. The service costs month12.99/month and gives you access to more than six dozen newspapers, 450 magazines and 15 digital-only publications.