The popular puzzle game “Wordle” has been taken over by the parent company of the “New York Times”. The publisher reported on Monday. Wordle is about guessing a five-letter word once a day with a maximum of six attempts.
This is a digital remake of the popular TV format “Lingo”, which was first broadcast on American television in the late 1980s and has more than 500 episodes. In 1993 and 1994, the German broadcaster Sat.1 produced a version with moderator Bernd Schumacher called “5 times 5” – which was extremely short-lived for the quiz show nation Germany.
Software developer Josh Wardle programmed Wordle as a web application in October 2021. It has since taken the internet by storm. The fact that users could share their game results via social networks such as Twitter contributed to its popularity.
Twitter even blocked an account with the name @wordlinator last week, which revealed the solution word in advance, i.e. “spoiled”. He was probably able to do this because the solution words are noted in the website’s source code, as software engineer Robert Reichel writes on his blog.
Celebrities such as actress J.-Smith Cameron (known from the HBO series “Succession”) or talk show host Jimmy Fallon have also revealed that they play Wordle. Fallon even did this on his late night show.
According to the New York Times Company, Wordle is used by millions every day. The purchase price for the game is in the “lower seven-digit range”. Its developer Wardle is now a millionaire. The publisher said Wordle would be part of the New York Times Games portfolio.
Also in January, the news portal “The Athletic” was bought for 550 million dollars (approx. 490 million euros). By 2025, the publisher wants to reach ten million online subscribers. One million of these were already in the areas of cooking and games.
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However, the purchase by the New York Times Company casts an odd light on an article about Wordle that appeared in the New York Times in early January. Its author not only praises Wordle to the skies, but in it Josh Wardle, conversely, explains the crossword puzzles and spelling games of the “New York Times” as the sources of inspiration for developing Wordle.
In 2020, he and a partner “really loved” playing crosswords and the game “Spelling Bee” in the pages of the newspaper, “so I wanted to make a game that she would enjoy.”
Wordle’s success has also garnered the attention of the industry because it took place entirely outside of the Apple and Google app stores.
However, as the number of users increased, so did the number of unauthorized copies. While Wordle clones were quickly removed from the Apple and Google app stores, there are still a number of Wordle offers on the rest of the Internet that copy the game idea without the consent of the creator. (Tsp, dpa)
