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'The New York Times' buys Wordle
The New York Times has acquired Wordle, a simple word guessing game, for an undisclosed price in the low-seven figures, the newspaper announced Monday.
The game, created by Josh Wardle, will initially continue to be free to play.
Wordle, which was released in October 2021, is a daily word puzzle that has soared in popularity, amassing millions of daily players within months.
To play the game, players have six tries to guess a five-letter word. Many users choose to share their results — a grid of green, yellow and black boxes — on social media.
Also at CNN.
See also: The New York Times Buys Wordle
The Sudden Rise of Wordle
Wordle buyout by New York Times draws backlash from fans
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The New York Times Buys Word Guessing Game "Wordle"
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Conquering Russia should be done steppe by steppe.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday February 02 2022, @08:14AM (9 children)
Good to know. I visited the Apple App Store, and there are a bunch of ripoff clones there. Apparently they're being moved on fairly quickly by Apple, but seem to keep popping up.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday February 02 2022, @10:49AM (8 children)
The game principle sounds sufficiently unoriginal to me that I wonder that you could actually consider it protected (the actual software is, of course, copyright protected, but that is irrelevant for independently written knock-offs). Unless I'm missing something, it's just Mastermind, but with the colour pegs replaced by letters of a word, and their number increased from four to five. Actually, I wonder if the original Mastermind makers still have rights on which this might infringe.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday February 02 2022, @12:16PM
I've not played this game* myself, but it seems that a key part of the experience is sharing your progress with others on social media by showing the sequence of correct/incorrect guesses, without showing which letters you guessed (and spoiling the puzzle for others). Without that element, it feels quite unoriginal.
*Wordle, that is. I've played Mastermind plenty of times in my youth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 02 2022, @01:23PM
It appears to be Mastermind using words, and Invicta released a word-based version of Mastermind back in the 70s [twitter.com].
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday February 02 2022, @04:00PM
Mastermind is a fun little game and I've played various versions of the same game concept. Wordle is exactly like that, but with words. As posted below apparently it's popular, because social stuff. Still, it's a fun little game. Though, a fun little game, you get to play one time a day. I mean, I guess that's part of the appeal? I would definitely have jumped on the first low 7 figure buyout that I got. For something like that, especially. It's simple, probably didn't take the person/team a huge amount of time to produce and/or was done in their off time. Instant Millionaire, yes please.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday February 02 2022, @04:37PM (2 children)
You can't copyright the rules of a game regardless, just the text you use to describe them, art/design or you can trademark the name.
Not Playing Around: Board Games and Intellectual Property Law [americanbar.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Wednesday February 02 2022, @04:56PM (1 child)
Welcome back. I see the reports of your death [soylentnews.org] have been greatly exaggerated.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday February 02 2022, @05:59PM
Haha, thanks! I was recovering from some pretty major surgery and it's kind of nice to know y'all missed me!
Those reports weren't as far off as I would have preferred!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 02 2022, @04:38PM
Wordle is like Mastermind but it is much easier because:
* the game tells you which guesses are in the correct position
* the secret is restricted to being a valid word (my impression is they are using the Scrabble wordlist)
I played it a few times and found it very easy (the game has a "hard mode" but this does not make it hard). It might be a fun way to do vocabulary practice but the fact that you can only play once per day really limits its effectiveness.
I'm honestly not sure what the fuss is about.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 02 2022, @05:44PM
Board games and board game mechanics are notoriously not-strictly-enforced. (Or rather, they are enforced in the way that regular people think they should be, rather than Disney/Microsoft style enforcement. ) You can check for advice for new board-game makers and they say to not bother getting patents or trademarks on your games, as they are worth less than the paper they are written on.
Just think "Words with Friends," as an example.
This does raise the question of why the New York Times spent so much to buy this. The answer, I suspect, is that they are spending the money to buy the brand recognition and user base, not the literal code, which a good developer could white-box write from scratch in a couple of days.