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.