No ads, no pay to play, no upgrades, no sign in, no social graph, takes 2 minutes per day, everyone plays the same/one puzzle per day, unwritten rules you don't ruin it for others, etc etc. The perks are great, I hope the NYT doesn't change it. I could take an ad, but changes to anything else might make me stop playing.

Plus, the "share" mechanism is obviously not an invasion of privacy or a tracking beacon. It just puts a cute unicode game board in your clipboard, as far as I can see.

Once one sees that mechanism, it cannot be forgotten. Wide knowledge of the technique is among Wordle's gifts to the world.

Thanks, I didnt realize those shares were text and wondered how to export them. How cool!

Yeah they're just unicode emojis really simple to do and a big part of the popularity imo. From discord, twitter or whatsapp I can easily share and compare with a bunch of different groups of friends.

If the NYT only adds a link to their home page on the share function it has been worth it for them, millions of impressions per day for almost 0 cost.

> I could take an ad

Why?

There is objectively nothing that NYT could add to the game to make it more interesting. It can only make it worse.

They could serve the correct words from server side so that it's not trivial to find them.

The original creator was not able to do that due to infrastructure limitations, but surely NYT would have the proper setup to handle that.

So the fun word game stops working while commuting by train because it needs to stop me "cheating" in a purely fun /social game by phoning home during the time I have to play it, where the connection is spotty at best, and the quick game loop of guess, read result, think gets janked because of railway cuttings and tunnels?

All because someone coukd read the source to cheat and wouldn't, idk, just copy paste the squares about in their tweets?

Exactly. It's somewhat baffling to me how some people focus so much on the technology aspects of something to the point of forgetting that its success is due to the things that it does not do.

Again, how does that improve the game?

For context, a Twitter bot was recently banned for automatically replying to Wordle tweets and spoiling the next day's word. Preventing that would improve the gameplay experience by defending against malicious disruption.

Not really. The bot can get its data from when NZ hits midnight, hours and hours before America and Europe etc. Even if it was always released at the exact same time globally, nothing to stop a bot solving it / fetching it immediately and replying to users posts from yesterday about what todays one is.

We know that wordle is completely trivial for computers to solve. Hiding the solutions won’t do anything to stop that particular behavior.

The game is perfect as is, and I’m sad that it will now be used to make money.

It always loads fast. Quite a nice feature..

I don't see a point of this. I could probably find the correct word for today by Googling so server/client side does not make any difference if we all share the same word for the day which is I think the major feature behind the success.

Is this to stop you from cheating?

> You can feel any way you want about NYT, but you’d argue that “multiple word length” options wouldn’t make the game better for some? Or hybridizing it with the crossword?

Anything that takes away from everyone getting the same word on the same day will absolutely nuke its popularity. There's really nothing novel about the game to make it popular other than that. Don't get me wrong, it's fun and well implemented, but the concept existed before Wordle. What makes Wordle successful is how dirt-simple it is to share your results on any medium.

There is/was a Dutch TV show called Lingo that is based on the same game and I'd expect there to be more such shows.

Only variations the TV show has is the 6 word version on Saturday and some comedians made a sketch with a 19 letter version: words like "Marshallplanachtige" [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7CR1v1fKW0

EDIT: of course there's also this classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7qxpAUKy4c in which some dude tries to not say a word he probably saw in a porno but does have to say it of course so mispronounces.

> everyone getting the same word on the same day

Not really true as it is, being based on local time. For example, there's only a one hour period each day where someone in New Zealand and someone in Hawaii have the same word.

Fortunatly Wordle clearly signals it with a countdown timer, instead of leaving it up to the reader to figure out what "day" they mean like other daily puzzle sites or people on the internet in general.

I would never have found the game (and played it) without those results being shared. Anecdata, sure, and correlation != causation an all that, but I have to agree.

Have you considered your impulse to make everything bigger, better, more efficient, more configurable, more profitable, etc is actually the “small minded” one in this day and age?

No, because I'm not the one speaking in absolutes about hypotheticals?

I'm trying to keep my mind open to possibility?

Okay, how about being open to the possibility that it’s exactly the simplicity and stress-free minimalism that has led to its success and popularity?

You are getting caught up in emotion.

GP stated “NYT can only ruin wordle”. I said that’s small minded.

He may be right! It’s the certainty that is so anti-hacker! Just because you like something doesn’t mean it can’t be improved!

Isn’t that literally what hacking is?!?!

> You are getting caught up in emotion.

What else is there? People don't enjoy the game because of logic and reason, they enjoy it because of emotion: it's fun, you get a feeling of accomplishment when you win, when you lose, you feel driven to do better tomorrow, etc.

It's all very very simple, and that's what's great about it.

Please stop with the "that's anti-hacker" rhetoric. That's the kind of talk designed to shut down discussion. I think it's only natural to be cynical of a big corporation like NYT buying up a small one-person creation. Wordle is great as it is. Maybe there are ways to improve it, but I doubt NYT can do anything the original developer can do, at least not without completely changing the game into something it's not.

Again, I was responding to this:

>There is objectively nothing that NYT could add to the game to make it more interesting. It can only make it worse.

What discussion did THAT open?

EDIT: And I'm glad you're expressing opinions! That's the point of discourse. GP was doing something different and just because you agree with GP's opinion doesn't mean that his rhetorical choices are sound!

Fair, an absolutist statement like that is pretty silly and obviously false. And whether any particular change makes a game better or worse is inherently subjective; "objectively nothing" is false by definition.

There are already a gazillion variations of the game out there. Any kid can take the core idea and make an open source version with all these configurations. Actually it has already been done, just look for the "evil wordle" version that was some "show HN".

My point is that, while is nice for the original creator that he could find someone to give that much money for the game, this valuation is only based on how much rent the NYT might be able to extract from it, not from the value of the creation itself. And that tells me that as an user I have nothing to benefit from this acquisition.

It’s amazing how confident people in this forum can be about things they have no insight into sometimes.

You may be right! But what’s your evidence for “NYT is into seeking rent”?

> But what’s your evidence for “NYT is into seeking rent”?

Aside from the eyeballs, please tell me what value is there in the wordle property to justify buying it for millions of dollars?

If the game itself was using interesting closed technology or had any other kind of intellectual property attached to it, then maybe it could be justified. But nobody spends that amount of money if they are not looking for ways to make it back manifold.

You don't think 'Good UX" is technology?

EDIT: or are you implying that NYT should have just copied it, rather than rewarding the creator?

If the product already has millions of users who need no training or coaching to get using it, the "Good UX" is already there.

> Are you implying that NYT should have just copied it, rather than rewarding the creator?

I am not implying anything. I am stating that the only thing that the NYT (or anyone else really) would be interested in buying from wordle is the user base, they made an investment and they will look for ways to get their money back.

Everything else is easy to replicate. It's hard to think of a way where they can get their money back that doesn't destroy or puts a limit on the things that make it so appealing to people.

If you think that any corporation has any interest of giving away millions of dollars to someone as "reward", I have a bridge to sell you.

They do so much stupid stuff in the crossword (REBUS, missing letters, un-ordered phrases) that they can make a mess of anything. I HOPE they'll keep it as it is but just charge for past Wordles. That's the only improvement they could make.

  They do so much stupid stuff in the crossword (REBUS, missing letters, un-ordered phrases)

Those are the meta game puzzles which generally happen on Wed or Thu. They can be frustrating, but the “aha!” moment, when you discover what’s going on, is the point. Those puzzles are the ones that set NYT crosswords as the gold standard and show off the creativity of the puzzle makers. Of course YMMV.

If you think "multiple word length" would enhance the game, you haven't thought for very long about what makes the game work. It basically has to be 5 letters or the entire structure falls apart.

As for Craigslist, I suspect there's not "a reason". I imagine it's a lot of different, complex reasons.

While I'm not absolute on the notion that 5 letters is perfect, I found the current game lives on quite a precarious balance; There is a Japanese version with around 65 possible letters, and the secret word being 4 letters, but this turns out to be significantly harder, with the game rules adjusted accordingly to allow up to 12 tries. Despite being able to play it in my mother tongue, I found it less fun. Tweaking the formula (even in English) will likely require lot of thought into re-balancing.

Ok I’m ignorant. Why only 5 letters?

Also one could argue the root cause of those many, complex reasons is under-investment in R&D based in the assumption “the current product is perfect”

Timing for the game loop and accessibility.

5 letters gives enough options without requiring the player to have access to a lot of guesses to have any hope of winning, and gives the game a short playtime.

It's built to be quick to play. You can play it on a commute, or dip in a few times throughout the day.

You wouldn't have that progress visible to players with a larger problem space. Tangentially, you'd also wind up having to lean more on "technical" (as in scoped to a particular domain, not technological) language in order to fill the list. That limits access to those outside of that field of study.

You’re just describing positive aspects of the game in its current state, not “anything other than 5 letters causes the game to fall apart”

+1 on everything you said, except it takes me more than 2 minutes per day. :D

Me too... was just showing off :)

There will be one ad but it will be Punch the Monkey and it will hover over the keyboard until you go to type. It will then move to the row below the one you are guessing.

Looking through the rest of NYT games, I can see this becoming a pay to play thing pretty soon.

They will absolutely change it.

The question is: would anyone pay low seven figures just for the privilege of hiding the same thing? They'd expect this investment to return few times. They'd either start pushing "better" (different) version to subscribed people, splitting the community. Or, as you mentioned, introduce ads. But I don't think just acquiring a channel to display ads was the goal (the article mentions the goal to grow subscriber base), because it's a fad that will fade away- good chances are this will happen before they manage to show enough ads to recoup the initial investment.

> No ads, no pay to play, no upgrades, no sign in, no social graph

yet.

The NYTimes mobile app has a section at the very bottom of the scroll with 5(+1) games. The +1 is for the crossword puzzle, which is included in mini form whole the full chonker requires its own subscription. I image they are going to give wordle top billing in the section. Maybe there'll be a page anyone can visit, but I think they'll use it to keep subscribers returning to the app daily, having to scroll past something they'll want to read on their way, seeing some adds and giving them one more reason not to stop the renewal charges.

The minute NYT starts to mess with it, clones are going to pop like mushrooms.

Um...

https://rwmpelstilzchen.gitlab.io/wordles/

> takes 2 minutes per day

I feel stupid.

Nah, you can actually solve it really fast if you have a few goto starting words. I use house, trail and one more I can't remember now. Longest I ever spent since then on Wordle has been maybe 3 minutes.

Dharmesh Shah (hubspot founder) built a tool called FirstWord that ranks word choices. https://firstword.com/

I'm expecting ads and also a hyperlink in the sharing copypasta at the very least.

Vowels are now behind a paywall.

I'd like to buy a vowel..

Well you can't. The best you can do is buy a license to use a vowel up to three times in the present game.

Any subsequent value usage must be repurchased. No trading of vowels.

Vowels on the Blockchain. Each user should be able to earn when they are done with the vowels they've purchased

I disagree. In fact I'd say no one comes to wordle just to play a word game for 5 minutes and then forget about it. People share their solution grids all over the internet and private groups. They discuss their strategies and favorite start words. Late night hosts all play it on their shows. There's a new Wordle meme trending on Twitter every day. Heck people are so passionate about it that online backlash forced Apple to remove clones from the App Store and Twitter to remove bots that post spoilers – in under a day.

> In fact I'd say no one comes to wordle just to play a word game for 5 minutes and then forget about it.

I do. And I'd be surprised if I'm the only one.

Sure you aren't the only one, but looking at real data vs anecdotes (https://morningconsult.com/2022/01/20/wordle-millennials/), 59% of adults and 73% of millennials who play wordle are sharing their results on social media.

If 73% of millennials started tweeting about their bowel movements tomorrow, would you be trying to monetize the toilet as the hottest new social network?

Social media is a communication tool. What you’re seeing is evidence that normal human beings share interests and discuss them. That is not automatic evidence that the interest needs to be technologically exploited at the source. That this is not immediately clear is a significant driver behind the most reprehensible parts of the computing industry. I also think you’re overlooking that “I solved it in four! Yay!” is a mild extension of the anecdotes you’re hearing about five minutes and forget (they’re not mutually exclusive). I bet even the engineers who spent the last couple weekends solving for the optimal word are ready to put that bag down, too, and are probably just as strongly in that five minute group.

It already has a Share button that is implemented in the most respectful way possible for a user. Wordle’s backlog is precisely zero items long. Anything you’d do to it to consider social media would make it fundamentally worse. That you think it’s a social network in waiting leaves a metallic taste in my mouth and a bunch of despair for where we are.

> If 73% of millennials started tweeting about their bowel movements tomorrow, would you be trying to monetize the toilet as the hottest new social network?

This is HN, do you really want to know how that question would be answered?

A question that can only be answered in the form of a VC pitch deck.

> If 73% of millennials started tweeting about their bowel movements tomorrow, would you be trying to monetize the toilet as the hottest new social network?

Isn't that exactly how tiktok was born?

If you could monetize the toilet, you would make a shitload of money.

We could, biogas digestors are a thing :-); we do plumbing is a highly paid profession and people waste enormous amounts of ressources (think of all that water we waste!) to take a crap in "the right environment" even though imo "Turkish" toilets provide a better position for bowel evacuation...

We have a winner

If 73% of millennials starting tweeting about their bowel movements tomorrow, would you be trying to monetize the toilet as the hottest new social network?

I told my Mom I solved last night's Wordle in two. That's making conversation about a shared interest. It's the reprehensible worst of this industry to pivot that interest into exploiting it at the source simply because it exists. Put succinctly: in no rational world is my having a conversation with someone about Wordle evidence that it needs a Sign in with Facebook button.

It already has a share button, implemented in probably the most respectful way possible. Absolutely nothing needs to be changed. Wordle is perfect user-respecting technology in any way. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that every change you have in mind to improve it will make it significantly worse because you disagree with my assessment.

> 59% of adults and 73% of millennials

Weird breakdown choice, again with the infantilizing of millennials. All millenials are adults

My favourite part is that I don't need to care or think about it once I'm done. I can have a nice little puzzle to start the day and then move on.

I can say that it captured my social group precisely because 1) the clipboard-based sharing works just as well in our private chat as it does on Twitter or Facebook and 2) the total lack of ads, monetization, or growth-hacking gimmicks meant that people felt comfortable sharing their results without feeling like they're spamming their friends.

I played it this way. And then I showed my wife and kids. For a few days we played over the family group chat. But now I'm on a group Messages chat with my wife's family (they are all non-techies). They all started playing it independent of us and we just got added to the group.

It's funny how it spreads... the ease of sharing results is what I think has really driven the popularity.

You're not.

I wonder, for a person who was posting their Wordle solutions to Facebook, Twitter and Discord under accounts that they were trying to keep separate, how many posts it would take to uniquely identify somebody. It must be only a handful, at most.

Anyway, that's a pretty constructed scenario, but it is sorta interesting to think about.

In any case -- fortunately it is NYT, so I bet they'll happily just let it go to a nice stable daily crossword sized population and stick there indefinitely without messing it up. Maybe they can add a 6-wordle for subscribers.

A single day holds at an absolute maximum of 3^30 different combinations but in practice it's probably much less than that because people converge to more green boxes (generally) as they guess more. I'd bet by 3 days though you've provided a unique set of answers.

That's the ballpark I was thinking, too. The only wrench I can think of that might get thrown into it -- there are some known popular starters and popular guessing styles. If you go for, say, ARISE and then hunt vowels, I bet the number of collisions could be strung along a bit longer.

I mean they don't come to Wordle to do that they play wordle and go other places. I would not have played it if it wanted me to log in and link my socials or recreate my social graph to share.

When I said people don't go to wordle for a social network I mean wordle comes to whatever social grouping you already have because it's so simple and easy to share. It's not a social network it's a thing people do socially which is vastly different.

> there's no built in social or ad bs and the results can easily be shared anywhere you want if you want

Not for much longer. NYT has to recoup that investment somehow.

There is one freemium model for Wordle that has seemed obvious to me since the first time I launched it on a laptop after playing the first few on mobile: sync. The emphasis on historical play data and streaks make portable continuity a premium good for this particular game.

I had actually kind of been hoping Wardle would have the same idea and that I would at some point be able to pay a few dollars a year for an account I could sign into to keep my Wordle career in sync. It looks like that account will now be an NYT account, and while it won't make me a subscriber by itself, it's one more benefit to weigh in potentially subscribing at some point.

Sync makes sense. Otherwise if I switch between mobile and desktop I might lose my streak!

Wordle would actually fit in perfectly with the NYT crossword app.

The business model is that you get the latest puzzle for free and you can pay a subscription to get access to old ones. Not sure how much money they make, but I've paid more to them than most apps in the store.

They could already have cloned the game—even if the mechanics were novel, which they are not. The thing isn't even at a relevant domain name. I don't see how they bought anything but the name "Wordle" here—and, hell, maybe that alone is worth seven figures. God knows I'd have sold it for that, if it were mine.

I think nyt being the top result when people search "wordle" is probably worth 7 figures.

Sure, I'm not saying it was a dumb move at that price. Depends on how much staying-power the fad has, I guess.

Though when I first tried to find it a couple weeks ago, Wordle was not the top result for "Wordle". Result 3 or 4 IIRC. But I'd expect NYT can fix that.

Just because they could have easily cloned it doesn't mean it's dumb to reward (and be seen rewarding) the creator.

This is better PR than a media goliath ripping off the success of the little guy.

Thez bought a redirrct from the current website to their domain. At some point in time all wordle players will move to nytimes.com/wordle or similar at least once.

Well they might also have bought the trade dress.

In case anyone interested in a NYT games subscription didn't know this it is half price if you also have a NYT newspaper subscription. If your games subscription is set up to auto-renew it stays at half price even if you no longer have a NYT newspaper subscription when the games subscription renews.

Too bad it'll take months for the savings to offset the time you will invest in canceling the NYT newspaper subscription...

If you pay for a NYT subscription with PayPal, you can cancel payments w/ PayPal. NYT will auto-email you often, but eventually give up.

I've found[0] https://timewarple.com/ which allows me to play older wordles. It requires you go in order 0 & beyond, button to advance is in the statistics tab after you complete the current round.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/wordlegame/comments/rxeg1f/you_can_...

> The business model is that you get the latest puzzle for free and you can pay a subscription to get access to old ones.

Are you sure? I just tried to see today's crossword from a non-logged-in browser, and it said that I had to be subscribed.

I've only tried it from their app, so maybe it's different. I may also be thinking only of the Mini crosswords.

The Mini is free. The main one seems to be sub/app only. The bee one lets you enter a few words and then throws up a paywall. On iOS, I cannot get the keyboard to appear on Mini as of the last few weeks, so stopped visiting completely.

It could simply be content for their offering. Like when Netflix buys the right to a movie, they don't inject ads into it, it simply makes a Netflix subscription marginally more enticing.

And for the NYT, a company that made a $55M profit last quarter, it's probably a good bet.

I pay for the NY Times Crossword app subscription (at least some months when I travel a lot). I havent paid for news subscription in about a year.

Could see there being a daily free Wordle and then a paid app with a few more variants/archives.

I am a regular user of the NYT games page. As long as you have adblock enabled its a pretty good experience. For some games they might post a leaderboard and certain games like the crossword require you to have a subscription. But many others are free and have no login requirement such as the Spelling Bee [1].

1. https://www.nytimes.com/puzzles/spelling-bee

I ran into this after a few minutes of play.

https://i.imgur.com/b8P2iVM.png

Yes me too, and it confused me. Does that mean I got all the possible words? I got around sixteen IIRC, but feel like there might be more? I don't know, but that screen is a dead end which doesn't either make that clear or let me go back.

And BTW I'm using Chrome with uBlock Origin enabled here.

The game is points-based, "genius rank" means something like 80% of the possible points have been found.

https://i.imgur.com/dw244XL.png

You can't actually complete the game without paying. I think it's a pretty dark pattern - get the player invested, then block their progress.

I've got that screen after a couple of words. It might be point-based because I swear I got it very early after getting an 8-10 letter word. Other times it doesn't show up for 15ish words.

The NYT daily mini crossword is free. I bet they just want easy, habit forming things to get people to check their site once a day. Add a 6-wordle for subscribers or something and it fits in perfectly.

Not that much addery on https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/mini

Call to uninstall the app?

There is no app to uninstall.

Oh there will be, though.

The NYTs existing games are on a website.

And even as nice as it is it's not going to sustain this level of hype for more than another couple of weeks.