6 ms·

I expect the factors keeping it from being higher include: the possibility that it's a fad and vanishes as fast as it rose, or the fact that recreating it from

I expect the factors keeping it from being higher include: the possibility that it's a fad and vanishes as fast as it rose, or the fact that recreating it from scratch is also just a couple days work.

sharkweek 5y ago
I'm having flashbacks to Zynga buying Draw Something right as it was peaking for 200 million before a total collapse. That being said, Wordle at a few million for access to that many daily users... Doesn't take a ton of them signing up for NYTimes puzzle accounts to make the math pencil out. Happy for the creator, avid fan of the game myself. It's the perfect 10 minute break in the middle of the day.
- cableshaft 5y ago
  I'm not planning on stopping anytime soon. I'm sure I will eventually but for now it's a fun quick puzzle that I'm not allowed to get sucked into for more than 10 minutes a day. Seriously trying to internalize some design lessons from it and might pivot a couple puzzle game ideas (that are still pretty early) to incorporate some of the ideas of Wordle. Unforunately those puzzle ideas aren't quite as inherently viral, in that they pretty much just have one solution and not multiple paths to a solution you can show off...but at least the one set challenge per day I can incorporate.
  - singingboyo 5y ago
    I'm not sure that will last, though. I told myself that, and then I "solved" it. 4 words, with no overlap, covering most of the common letters... it's near impossible to lose. I went through the archive, needed to use the 6th row for just one out of 20 or so puzzles. Sure, there are more optimal solutions for individual puzzles, but it's no longer much fun - it pretty much reduces to just solving an anagram.
    - Kiro 5y ago
      No-one I know plays it simply to win. I like starting with a new word every day just to see where it takes me. It's a meditative ritual. When we actually lose that itself becomes a fun topic to discuss.
      - cableshaft 5y ago
        Yeah, exactly. I mostly try a different word each day. It is most optimal? Nah, but then I'm basically just turning up the difficulty level a bit.
    - caddemon 5y ago
      I've added my own extra rule that I have to retain any existing knowledge from row to row, so green letters have to stay in place, yellow letters have to be included (and moved), and grey letters can't be used again (not that you'd generally want to). I think that keeps it much more fresh from day to day, although I haven't thought too hard about meta strategies. I always input the same first word but then go from there just using what comes to mind first without violating any of my current "rules".
      - cableshaft 5y ago
        That's basically what hard mode is in the settings. I don't stick to that strictly so I haven't turned it on, but I do mostly do what you say. Sometimes I'll let a guess not include those letters though, especially if I'm struggling.
        caddemon 5y ago
        TIL Wordle has settings. Interesting, thanks!
        cableshaft 5y ago
        Basically just toggles for Hard Mode, Dark Theme, and Color Blind Mode, and links for his email and twitter, but yep, it has them.
  - function_seven 5y ago
    Same. Draw Something was a frenzy of novelty and delight. It wore out fast. I went from playing a dozen times a day to never opening it again within a month. Wordle is something I do like clockwork every morning. Along with 4 friends in a group text. Just like a daily crossword puzzle, or a Jumble, or whatever Cracking the Cryptic posts on their Youtube channel. The only thing that will stop me is if NYT decides to get heavy-handed with it. Ads and subscriptions and other gross bullshit will kill this game fast.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    I already found a clone that lets me play historical puzzles in succession. I think the puzzle mechanic is neat, and when I'm in the mood I want to play it for a bunch of rounds until I get tired of it, then put it down for potentially many days. I'm not interested in the daily hook thing—I think it's a scummy pattern (even though I share the admiration of having it free of ads and tracking).
    - cableshaft 5y ago
      Why do you think it's a scummy pattern?
      - tshaddox 5y ago
        Because it’s an artificial limitation that only serves to benefit the creator of the game by getting players to come back every day.
  - thomasahle 5y ago
    > Seriously trying to internalize some design lessons from it I've thought about this too. Should all games in the future be limited to just one game a day? Lots of puzzles could easily support this, but I'd be worried that it annoyed my users more than it made them happy...
cyral 5y ago
Due to it being so simple to make, there are also tons of clones of the app on the app stores since there isn't actually an official app. I imagine a lot of people are actually playing those clones and not the website.
- caf 5y ago
  Are the clones solving the original each day so they can have the same target word?
  - fluffyllemon 5y ago
    The answers for each day (past and future) are hard coded in the javascript source and viewable in the client, so they are quite accessible for anyone that's interested
distribot 5y ago
Is the couple days work thing really relevant? You could have a solid Airbnb clone in a couple months (I'd imagine) and it's worth thousands of times Wordle. I think it has to be customer base, IP, and developer team that they're really paying for.
- sequoia 5y ago
  There's not much network effect for wordle. If you make another one tomorrow I can just as easily play it there. To be honest buying his game was as much a courtesy from the times as anything, if they were unscrupulous and didn't fear brand hit, they could simply copy it.
  - luplex 5y ago
    It might be a defensive acquisition. They don't want free word games to be out there. They want a monopoly on word games.
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    They definitely bought it for the current userbase not the actual content, the NY Times article opens straight into how they are hoping to switch it to a subscription after the "initial" period. Even if they only convert 2% of current players to 1 years worth of subscription that's 2 million of whatever "low millions" they put into it without having to grow their own userbase from scratch while competing with the original free one everyone is already using today.
  - doopy1 5y ago
    > There's not much network effect for wordle. The game is viral because of the way people share their results on social media. This is a huge network effect.
    - allturtles 5y ago
      I don't think so. You could make a Wordle clone with exactly the same ability to share results, and there would be no reason to use the original Wordle over Wordle 2. This is not true of say, Facebook - the fact that all your friends are already on Facebook makes it more valuable than Facebook 2.
tasha0663 5y ago
Also the possibility that it will lose all its charm now that NYT has to figure out how to make money from it. Part of the fun is that its a goofy little niche project.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  NYT does crosswords well. I suspect they'll put wordle on the crossword app and use it to get people to get a crossword subscription.
- tinco 5y ago
  Maybe I'm overly optimistic but it's such a low amount that maybe NYT doesn't really need to recuperate much. Just attaching their brand to it and posting a message on it every month or two is already worth it for them.
  - bigiain 5y ago
    Hell, I wouldn't be _too_ surprised if just having the existing 1m+ Wordle user base visit the NYTimes website most days just to play, and the extra page views and potential other pages users list once they there - might be worth "low seven figures" to them all on it's own. Just redirecting the world site/page to nytimes.com/wordle and wrapping their header/footer/ads around it might well add several million in value to them over a year or two... (No guarantee that it'll actually last that long with that many users, but it might go the other way too, with NYTimes brand behind it it might double or 10x its DAU as well?)
Eridrus 5y ago
I think an undervalued bit of value here is that everyone is guessing the same word every day, enabling the social sharing of "wordle plots". So even if you have a recreation, you need to own the canonical word list to gain the social sharing value that helped it spread.
- IHLayman 5y ago
  I hope then that the NYT vetted the word list before buying the app. I can tell you that there is at least one Scrabble-banned word in the answer list.
pge 5y ago
I am actually surprised how high the price is given this. Hard for me to imagine Wordle is still popular a year from now.NYT must be counting on converting x% of Wordle users into subscribers so the acquisition price is effectively advertising spend.
brimble 5y ago
They'll have to re-work it so much if they put it somewhere else that I expect the integration work would approach the cost of just re-implementing it.
- bonestamp2 5y ago
  I doubt it. I just downloaded the source and have it running from my local machine. It took me about 3 minutes.
  - brimble 5y ago
    I don't mean re-host, which is obviously trivial for this site, given how it works. I mean integrating with any kind of broader site ecosystem (styling, may need some kind of embedding or nesting, re-sizing to fit with other content, et c.), modifying branding, integration with apps (even "just embed this existing page in a webview" rarely goes as smoothly as one might hope), that kind of thing. If they do anything more than barely touch it at all—that is, if they try to actually use it for much—it's likely to be a decent amount of work.
darkstar999 5y ago
I figured they were buying the IP more than anything.
- yardstick 5y ago
  Wordle itself is a clone of Lingo, an old TV game show. I’d be surprised if there is any IP. Now there is value to the site, I wonder if there will be lawsuits from the creators/owners of Lingo. Actually I don’t think they were first to create the concept either. Maybe it’s like chess, way too old for anyone to “own”.

sharkweek 5y ago

I'm having flashbacks to Zynga buying Draw Something right as it was peaking for 200 million before a total collapse. That being said, Wordle at a few million for access to that many daily users... Doesn't take a ton of them signing up for NYTimes puzzle accounts to make the math pencil out. Happy for the creator, avid fan of the game myself. It's the perfect 10 minute break in the middle of the day.

cableshaft 5y ago
I'm not planning on stopping anytime soon. I'm sure I will eventually but for now it's a fun quick puzzle that I'm not allowed to get sucked into for more than 10 minutes a day. Seriously trying to internalize some design lessons from it and might pivot a couple puzzle game ideas (that are still pretty early) to incorporate some of the ideas of Wordle. Unforunately those puzzle ideas aren't quite as inherently viral, in that they pretty much just have one solution and not multiple paths to a solution you can show off...but at least the one set challenge per day I can incorporate.
- singingboyo 5y ago
  I'm not sure that will last, though. I told myself that, and then I "solved" it. 4 words, with no overlap, covering most of the common letters... it's near impossible to lose. I went through the archive, needed to use the 6th row for just one out of 20 or so puzzles. Sure, there are more optimal solutions for individual puzzles, but it's no longer much fun - it pretty much reduces to just solving an anagram.
  - Kiro 5y ago
    No-one I know plays it simply to win. I like starting with a new word every day just to see where it takes me. It's a meditative ritual. When we actually lose that itself becomes a fun topic to discuss.
    - cableshaft 5y ago
      Yeah, exactly. I mostly try a different word each day. It is most optimal? Nah, but then I'm basically just turning up the difficulty level a bit.
  - caddemon 5y ago
    I've added my own extra rule that I have to retain any existing knowledge from row to row, so green letters have to stay in place, yellow letters have to be included (and moved), and grey letters can't be used again (not that you'd generally want to). I think that keeps it much more fresh from day to day, although I haven't thought too hard about meta strategies. I always input the same first word but then go from there just using what comes to mind first without violating any of my current "rules".
    - cableshaft 5y ago
      That's basically what hard mode is in the settings. I don't stick to that strictly so I haven't turned it on, but I do mostly do what you say. Sometimes I'll let a guess not include those letters though, especially if I'm struggling.
      - caddemon 5y ago
        TIL Wordle has settings. Interesting, thanks!
        cableshaft 5y ago
        Basically just toggles for Hard Mode, Dark Theme, and Color Blind Mode, and links for his email and twitter, but yep, it has them.
- function_seven 5y ago
  Same. Draw Something was a frenzy of novelty and delight. It wore out fast. I went from playing a dozen times a day to never opening it again within a month. Wordle is something I do like clockwork every morning. Along with 4 friends in a group text. Just like a daily crossword puzzle, or a Jumble, or whatever Cracking the Cryptic posts on their Youtube channel. The only thing that will stop me is if NYT decides to get heavy-handed with it. Ads and subscriptions and other gross bullshit will kill this game fast.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  I already found a clone that lets me play historical puzzles in succession. I think the puzzle mechanic is neat, and when I'm in the mood I want to play it for a bunch of rounds until I get tired of it, then put it down for potentially many days. I'm not interested in the daily hook thing—I think it's a scummy pattern (even though I share the admiration of having it free of ads and tracking).
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    Why do you think it's a scummy pattern?
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      Because it’s an artificial limitation that only serves to benefit the creator of the game by getting players to come back every day.
- thomasahle 5y ago
  > Seriously trying to internalize some design lessons from it I've thought about this too. Should all games in the future be limited to just one game a day? Lots of puzzles could easily support this, but I'd be worried that it annoyed my users more than it made them happy...

cyral 5y ago

Due to it being so simple to make, there are also tons of clones of the app on the app stores since there isn't actually an official app. I imagine a lot of people are actually playing those clones and not the website.

caf 5y ago
Are the clones solving the original each day so they can have the same target word?
- fluffyllemon 5y ago
  The answers for each day (past and future) are hard coded in the javascript source and viewable in the client, so they are quite accessible for anyone that's interested

distribot 5y ago

Is the couple days work thing really relevant? You could have a solid Airbnb clone in a couple months (I'd imagine) and it's worth thousands of times Wordle. I think it has to be customer base, IP, and developer team that they're really paying for.

sequoia 5y ago
There's not much network effect for wordle. If you make another one tomorrow I can just as easily play it there. To be honest buying his game was as much a courtesy from the times as anything, if they were unscrupulous and didn't fear brand hit, they could simply copy it.
- luplex 5y ago
  It might be a defensive acquisition. They don't want free word games to be out there. They want a monopoly on word games.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  They definitely bought it for the current userbase not the actual content, the NY Times article opens straight into how they are hoping to switch it to a subscription after the "initial" period. Even if they only convert 2% of current players to 1 years worth of subscription that's 2 million of whatever "low millions" they put into it without having to grow their own userbase from scratch while competing with the original free one everyone is already using today.
- doopy1 5y ago
  > There's not much network effect for wordle. The game is viral because of the way people share their results on social media. This is a huge network effect.
  - allturtles 5y ago
    I don't think so. You could make a Wordle clone with exactly the same ability to share results, and there would be no reason to use the original Wordle over Wordle 2. This is not true of say, Facebook - the fact that all your friends are already on Facebook makes it more valuable than Facebook 2.

tasha0663 5y ago

Also the possibility that it will lose all its charm now that NYT has to figure out how to make money from it. Part of the fun is that its a goofy little niche project.

colinmhayes 5y ago
NYT does crosswords well. I suspect they'll put wordle on the crossword app and use it to get people to get a crossword subscription.
tinco 5y ago
Maybe I'm overly optimistic but it's such a low amount that maybe NYT doesn't really need to recuperate much. Just attaching their brand to it and posting a message on it every month or two is already worth it for them.
- bigiain 5y ago
  Hell, I wouldn't be _too_ surprised if just having the existing 1m+ Wordle user base visit the NYTimes website most days just to play, and the extra page views and potential other pages users list once they there - might be worth "low seven figures" to them all on it's own. Just redirecting the world site/page to nytimes.com/wordle and wrapping their header/footer/ads around it might well add several million in value to them over a year or two... (No guarantee that it'll actually last that long with that many users, but it might go the other way too, with NYTimes brand behind it it might double or 10x its DAU as well?)

Eridrus 5y ago

I think an undervalued bit of value here is that everyone is guessing the same word every day, enabling the social sharing of "wordle plots". So even if you have a recreation, you need to own the canonical word list to gain the social sharing value that helped it spread.

IHLayman 5y ago
I hope then that the NYT vetted the word list before buying the app. I can tell you that there is at least one Scrabble-banned word in the answer list.

pge 5y ago

I am actually surprised how high the price is given this. Hard for me to imagine Wordle is still popular a year from now.NYT must be counting on converting x% of Wordle users into subscribers so the acquisition price is effectively advertising spend.

brimble 5y ago

They'll have to re-work it so much if they put it somewhere else that I expect the integration work would approach the cost of just re-implementing it.

bonestamp2 5y ago
I doubt it. I just downloaded the source and have it running from my local machine. It took me about 3 minutes.
- brimble 5y ago
  I don't mean re-host, which is obviously trivial for this site, given how it works. I mean integrating with any kind of broader site ecosystem (styling, may need some kind of embedding or nesting, re-sizing to fit with other content, et c.), modifying branding, integration with apps (even "just embed this existing page in a webview" rarely goes as smoothly as one might hope), that kind of thing. If they do anything more than barely touch it at all—that is, if they try to actually use it for much—it's likely to be a decent amount of work.

darkstar999 5y ago

I figured they were buying the IP more than anything.

yardstick 5y ago
Wordle itself is a clone of Lingo, an old TV game show. I’d be surprised if there is any IP. Now there is value to the site, I wonder if there will be lawsuits from the creators/owners of Lingo. Actually I don’t think they were first to create the concept either. Maybe it’s like chess, way too old for anyone to “own”.