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