Melbourne-based entrepreneur Angas Tiernan built Minute Cryptic into a viral daily puzzle game attracting more than 200,000 players daily, transforming a single-clue concept into a profitable subscription business entirely through social media video testing and community support.
How a Single Clue Sparked a Viral Crossword Phenomenon
Melbourne-based entrepreneur Angas Tiernan spotted that friction and wondered why the format could not be streamlined. With a cryptic crossword, you’ve got 20 clues and no instructions… why don’t you have one clue and instructions? That seems like the better way to do it,
Tiernan explained to nine.com.au. As nine.com.au reported, that single thought inspired the creation of Minute Cryptic, an online puzzle game that serves up just one cryptic clue at a time. Two years after launch, the game draws more than 200,000 daily active players.
The puzzle mechanics rely on carefully constructed wordplay paired with a straightforward definition. The Minute Cryptic is made up of three distinct parts: a definition, an indicator and a fodder. Players encounter common clue types such as anagrams with indicator words like “mixed,” “broken,” or “confused,hidden answers concealed within the text, and reversals spelled backwards and signaled by terms like
back” or “returns.” Players also navigate double definitions, containers where one word is placed inside another, and score systems where your par score represents the expected number of hints for a clue of that difficulty, allowing users to use fewer hints than par to earn bonus points while the game tracks progress across daily puzzles and archives results.
Testing the Startup Concept Through Social Media Video Shorts
Long before developers built a website, Tiernan tested the product concept on social media. The entrepreneur spent months posting videos of himself solving cryptic clues on social media before a game was even in development. Without spending a single cent on marketing, and with no more than $400 ever going into investing in Minute Cryptic, Tiernan leveraged short-form video. The strict one-minute time limit on YouTube Shorts dictated the format and gave the project its name, as nine.com.au detailed.
“In startups, you’re looking for the fastest, easiest way to get a real response back. But how do you test what you’re doing? Actually, video is the easiest way to test a product… You don’t even need the product.”
Angas Tiernan, via nine.com.au
When Tiernan moved the videos from YouTube to TikTok, that is where it really ramped up. Commenters began asking where can I play this?
as people were commenting because the videos looked enough like a game that people thought they could play it. Tech developers noticed the outpouring of community support and extraordinarily began reaching out to offer their services for free, asking, Do you need help making this?
A designer built the first version of the website in her spare time.
Monetisation and the Membership Revenue Model
When the website first launched in 2024, there was no way to monetise the game, and no membership option, though the company made revenue from ads on their YouTube videos in which Tiernan would explain how he solved the daily clue. As nine.com.au noted, the site is now profitable just from memberships alone, boasting tens of thousands of subscribers.
The subscription option offers the free minute cryptic, as well as additional bonus clues, mini-games and the option to create your own clues for $14 a month or $140 a year. On a conservative estimate of 10,000 monthly subscribers, Minute Cryptic memberships would generate $140,000 for the company annually. Minute Cryptic also makes revenue from its best-selling clue-solving books by the same name, as well as merch.
The Psychology of the Cryptic Clue Reveal
Tiernan attributes the platform’s viral traction to the specific emotional release players experience upon solving a difficult puzzle, noting that users feel a sense of “joy” when they finally solve a clue. Comparing wordplay to comedy, Tiernan highlighted the parallels between word construction and punch lines.
“I think there’s a similarity between a punch line and a cryptic clue. A joke is a careful construction of words, designed to surprise and at the moment of surprise, you get a delightful feeling. You have all the pieces of the joke and when the punchline hits, everything comes together and you laugh. That’s kind of what a clue does, you carefully construct words, it all comes together and at the moment of realisation you got a feeling… all the pieces are there, but you don’t know how it comes together until you work it out.”
Angas Tiernan, via nine.com.au
While Minute Cryptic no longer monetises its YouTube videos, it still posts daily explanations of how to solve the clue, which are served up to users on the website after they have solved the daily clue.