Wordle clones are in trouble! New York Times ousts copycat that lets users play previous games

Can y’all guess the five-alphabetic character word that best describes how The New York Times, owner of Wordle, dealt with a clone of the ultra-pop word game? If yous guessed “purge,” “eject” or “expel,” congratulations, you lot won!

Wordle Archive, a Wordle clone that lets users play previous puzzles, was forced to take downward its website, according to Ars Technica. Visiting the now-defunct platform yields the following message: “Sadly, the New York Times has requested that the Wordle Archive exist taken down.”

• How to play Wordle
• How to install Wordle on Android or iOS
• The all-time laptops of 2022

New York Times topples Wordle clone

Wordle Archive had been upwardly since January, but information technology close down last week at The New York Times’ asking. “The usage was unauthorized, and nosotros were in touch with them,” a New York Times spokesperson told Ars Technica.

The official Wordle website only lets you play one Wordle game daily — and doesn’t let you play nor revisit previous games. As such, archival Wordle websites are bonny to users who want the opportunity to hop into a time machine and play bygone Wordle games.

It’s unclear how the media conglomerate litigiously pressured the Wordle Archive to buckle, merely information technology was enough to convince its founder to skedaddle. Nevertheless, Wordle Archive’s creator hopes to rope people back in with a new Wordle alternative: Word Grid. This time-limited game invites users to extract as many words as possible from a nine-alphabetic character grid.

With the New York Times putting its foot on Wordle Annal’s neck, there’s a high probability that the media giant volition hunt downward more Wordle clones — if they oasis’t already. After all, the New York Times paid an unrevealed vii-effigy sum to acquire Wordle from Josh Wardle. The last thing the media giant wants is other unauthorized alternatives hindering its Wordle authority.

The Verge pointed out that The New York Times filed for a trademark on Feb. 1, giving information technology ammo to accept down Wordle clones for copyright infringement. The media giant will take difficulties taking down give-and-take games that use the same game mechanics (due east.g., five-letter guesses), but if the clones use “Wordle” in their proper name, they could be toast.

We’ll be keeping an centre on how The New York Times intends to monetize Wordle. Hopefully, its withal-to-be-disclosed business organization plan symbiotically benefits itself and Wordle fans.