Apple has released “Emoji Game,” an internally developed daily puzzle, to Apple News+ subscribers in the United States and Canada in a surprise move timed to World Emoji Day. The title had been slated to debut alongside iOS 26 in September, but is instead available immediately on devices running iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4 and macOS 15.4. The game asks players to drag standard emoji and Apple’s new AI-generated “Genmoji” into incomplete words or phrases, aiming to solve three clues in as few as six moves. Results can be shared via Game Center leaderboards, and Apple plans to surface the title later this year inside its forthcoming Apple Games app. Emoji Game joins Crossword, Crossword Mini, Quartiles and Sudoku in the News+ puzzle catalogue. Apple positions the release as part of a broader effort to add stickier content to its US$12.99-a-month News+ service, following a strategy already employed by The New York Times and other publishers that bundle games with news subscriptions. Separately, the Unicode Consortium used World Emoji Day to confirm the eight characters that will be added in iOS 26—including Apple Core, Ballet Dancers and Trombone—maintaining the annual expansion that now puts the global emoji library at nearly 4,000 symbols.