A popular Wordle archive site is no longer usable and now displays a message that says, initially spotted by the eagle-eyed Ars Technica:
Sadly, the New York Times has requested that the Wordle Archive be taken down. However, you can still play the daily Wordle over on their official site.
Noah
This certainly makes us wonder what The New York Times’ end-game is; will they make their own playable archive of past Wordles? It is a definite possibility as the the New York Times Mini Crossword is free-to-play, while a paying subscription gets you access to the archive of Minis to play. We could see this being similar for World; the day-of Wordle remaining free-to-play but a subscription being required to access past Wordles.
Or are they going to actively go after and look to take-down any playable games that are utilizing the word ‘Wordle,’ which they filed for trademark on February 1st (the day they announced the acquisition of Wordle).
It’s unlikely that the way the game is played–guesses, five letters, and the like–is in trouble so much as any games using the word ‘Wordle’ specifically in their name. Whether “-dle” is safe is up to some interpretation, so we’ll have to wait and see what the NYT does going forward.
The concept of the game itself is not so unique that it cannot be replicated, but game developers may want to take care to modify the look and feel to make it appear less Wordle-inspired. We will have to wait and see what NYT’s next move is. They have been quite slow to incorporate Wordle into their Games’ section, despite getting the redirect done very quickly.
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