5 ms·
I mean, it's literally the 70's game "Mastermind" but with letters instead of colours, so any patents are out the window and copyright is dubious at best..
by convery 4y ago
I mean, it's literally the 70's game "Mastermind" but with letters instead of colours, so any patents are out the window and copyright is dubious at best..
- papandada 4y agoPatent a car? 'Tis but a carriage with engine!
- thrwyoilarticle 4y agoCars famous for being produced by a single company.
- papandada 4y agoCars or whatever, I claim that's a significant "but"
- ModernMech 4y agoI believe they would have only been able to copyright the actual sequence of words, not the mechanics of the game.
- zeckalpha 4y agoThere is (was?) a Word Mastermind. I have a set. Here’s a picture from the internet: https://jouets-retro.fr/3257-thickbox_default/word-mastermind-jeu-invicta-1975.jpg https://jouets-retro.fr/3257-thickbox_default/word-mastermin...
- toto444 4y agoAnd a TV show in France called Motus since forever.
- Majromax 4y agoThere's no copyright to the rules of the game itself, but its implementation as a work of Javascript is certainly copyrightable, in the same way that the manual of a board game is copyrightable. There may also be a copyright interest in the "target" and "guessable" word lists as collections, but I'm not certain of the applicable subtleties.
- kbutler 4y agoAnd the word list & order is definitely copyrightable. But you could probably argue that a list of historic wordles is a factual data set and thus exempt from copyright.
- e12e 4y agoI don't think that's fair. It might be mastermind to anyone who can't speak English - but the gameplay feels very different (and is: it's not about guessing a random sequence, it's about guessing a word based on clues). It's much closer to hangman.