COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — The five-letter word that describes the popular online word game Wordle: MOVED.
Many of Wordle’s fans recently discovered that the game has now been placed on the New York Times website.
While enthusiasts of the puzzle will be relieved that the game is not (yet) behind a paywall, previous scores remain intact and players still have six attempts to guess a five-letter word of the day, there are some slight changes.
Most notably, the URL is now nytimes.com/games/wordle and no longer powerlanguage.co.uk, which now opens to a page with some bio information and other links from Wordle’s creator, Josh Wardle.
Additionally, the game’s font has changed, blending in with the rest of the Times site. There is also a hamburger stack menu link at the top left of the screen that takes visitors to other New York Times games including Spelling Bee, The Crossword, The Mini, Tiles, Sudoku, Vertex and Letter Boxed. Some of which require a subscription to play.
The newspaper announced in January that it purchased Wordle for a price in the “low seven figures.”
The viral game designed by Wardle, a Brooklyn-based software engineer, launched in Oct. 2021 and rose to mass popularity when people began posting their scores to social media.
According to a New York Times press release, 90 people played the game on Nov. 1, 2021. Two months later, 300,000; now, the game has millions of daily players.
“If you’ve followed along with the story of Wordle, you’ll know that New York Times Games play a big part in its origins, and so this step feels very natural to me,” Wardle said in the press release.