Wordle Archive: a website where users have hundreds of previous daily five-letter wordle puzzles – has been removed at the request of wordle owner The New York Times.
The archive site, which offered a backward-looking play feature not available in the NYT’s official version of wordle, had been on since early January. But it was removed last week and replaced with a message that read: “Unfortunately, the New York Times has requested the removal of the Wordle archive.” A Search Twitter shows dozens of daily Wordle Archive players who were willing to share their results on social media until March 7.
“The use was unauthorized and we were in contact with them,” a New York Times representative said in response to a request for comment from Ars Technica. “We do not plan to comment further.”
The Wordle archive is still fully playable in its own archived form (as of March 5) on the internet archive, fittingly enough. Other sites that let you play archived wordle puzzles are not hard to find, as are sites that give you unlimited play wordle puzzles outside the usual one day limit.
But some of those sites could be under threat, if the Times’ treatment of Wordle Archive is any indication.
Are clones safe?
The underlying base game of five letters wordle is not in itself a completely original idea. The concept was widely popularized by lingo, a game show dating back to the 1980s in the US and other countries. The pen-and-paper game for two players jottodating from 1955, would also be well known by wordle players. Before that, according to at least one source, a more traditional version of the game called Bulls and Cows had been played since the 1800s.
But even if that state of the art didn’t exist, The New York Times would have trouble claiming copyright protection at its core. design from wordle† While wordleis specific presentation copyrighted, the game’s basic gambling mechanism is hard to protect with anything less than a patent (which in this case would be exceptionally hard to obtain).
“When you have a copyright, you protect the expression, not the idea,” Dallas attorney Mark Methenitis told Ars. “It’s a line that a lot of people have a really hard time with, especially when you get into games.”
The Times’ interest in wordle is less ambiguous when it comes to trademarks, protecting the game’s name and branding. The New York Times asked for a wordle trademark on Feb. 1, the day after the newspaper announced the game’s seven-figure purchase from original creator Josh Wardle.
That means the company can go after any other product that the wordle especially if there is a significant risk that an average user may mistake it for an official Times product. Plenty of other web games that take advantage of the wordle name are out there, as well as spin-offs like crossword that integrate wordle trademark.
Other games that use the “-dle” suffix to denote broad wordle agreements – a la windle† nerdor worldly– are also not entirely clear. The Tetris Company has filed trademark lawsuits against games with names only: comparable to the original Tetris† And that’s not even talking about games that copy Tetris‘ gameplay and presentation outright, showing that there is a level of direct game cloning that a court will not tolerate.
In January, before its acquisition by NYT, Apple made some egregious… wordle clone from iOS App Store after that clone received negative attention on social media† Section 4.1 of the iOS App Store Guidelines specifically mentions “copycats,” telling developers directly to “come up with your own ideas. We know you have them, so let yours come to life. Don’t just copy the latest popular ones. app on the App Store or make some minor changes to the name or UI of another app and pass it as your own.” But those restrictions did not necessarily apply directly to: wordlethat exists as a web game and not as a native iOS app.
While wordle remains free to play, and separate from the Times popular Games subscription plan, the company has made no commitment to the game’s long-term status. “We have no plans for the future of the game,” a Times spokesperson told Ars. “We are focused on continuing to make wordle a great everyday puzzle.”
