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Puzzle Games (Games) The Courts The Internet Games

NYT Takes Down Third-Party Wordle Archive (arstechnica.com) 33

Posted by BeauHD from the cease-and-desist dept.
The New York Times, which acquired Wordle in January, is putting an end to unofficial takes of the game. The latest casualty is Wordle Archive, a website that let users play through hundreds of previous daily five-letter Wordle puzzles. According to Ars Technica, the site "has been taken down at the request of Wordle owner The New York Times." From the report: The archival site, which offered a backward-looking play feature that's not available in the NYT's official version of Wordle, had been up since early January. But it was taken down last week and replaced with a message saying, "Sadly, the New York Times has requested that the Wordle Archive be taken down." A Twitter search shows dozens of daily Wordle Archive players who were willing to share their results on social media up through March 7. "The usage was unauthorized, and we were in touch with them," a New York Times representative said in response to an Ars Technica comment request. "We don't plan to comment beyond that."

The Wordle Archive is still fully playable in its own archived form (as of March 5) at the Internet Archive, appropriately enough. Other sites that allow you to play archived Wordle puzzles are not hard to find, as are sites that let you play unlimited Wordle puzzles beyond the usual one-a-day limit. But some of those sites may be under threat, if the Times' treatment of Wordle Archive is any indication.
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NYT Takes Down Third-Party Wordle Archive More

NYT Takes Down Third-Party Wordle Archive

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  • How to kill your own product. (Score:3)

    by SlashDotCanSuckMy777 ( 6182618 ) on Thursday March 17, 2022 @04:24PM (#62367215)

    Stupid company.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) *

      > Stupid company.

      Hey, it took them 18 months to go from "the Hunter Biden laptop is Russian Disinformation!" to using it as evidence in one of their new investigative journalism pieces, despite credible witnesses at the outset.

      Not the brightest bulbs in the box.

    • The New York Times heralded the Soviet Unionâ(TM)s Five Year Plan (which was supposed to be run by âoescienceâ) as a great success even though the New York Timeâ(TM)s USSR bureau chief, Walter Duranty, was aware of the millions who were starving. This is especially poignant today as millions died in the Ukraine while the Times covered it up. The Times got a Pulitzer for Durantyâ(TM)s reporting though now there are calls to recall the Pulitzer even though the Times still stands by i

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bjwest ( 14070 )
        You know Slashdot doesn't handle Unicode. Please fix your shit before posting, so we can actually read it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          You know Slashdot doesn't handle Unicode. Please fix your shit before posting, so we can actually read it.

          Yes it does, since 2003, actually. However, it filters what Unicode codepoints are allowed, and basically only the printable ones between 32 and 128. Everything else is disallowed, by forcibly clearing the high bit.

          This is because Unicode sucks - there are a bunch of "bad" codepoints that will do nothing but screw things up if you blindly accept them. Some of these are as you think, like RTL overrides,

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by bjwest ( 14070 )

            You know Slashdot doesn't handle Unicode. Please fix your shit before posting, so we can actually read it.

            Yes it does, since 2003, actually. However, it filters what Unicode codepoints are allowed, and basically only the printable ones between 32 and 128. Everything else is disallowed, by forcibly clearing the high bit.

            What is this crap then (from the post I complained about): Unionâ(TM)s âoescienceâ Timeâ(TM)s Durantyâ(TM)s didnâ(TM)t didnâ(TM)t wonâ(TM)t?

            Even though I can decipher them, I can't do so on the fly. They make me pause for a second or so, disrupting my reading flow. I now stop reading anything when I hit the first one.

  • Lots of programming tutorials use it as a puzzle game to teach basic programming.

    Just don't use the name Wordle (except as prior use, which there is some), and you should be fine.

    Unless NYT wants to claim ownership over the very idea - in which case, they've got a LONG haul ahead of them.

    Ryan Fenton

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by narcc ( 412956 )

      The puzzles themselves are also valuable IP. You can hardly blame them for wanting to protect that.

      They could hardly publish a book or an app that has the same puzzles you can get for free online.

    • Oh shit Ryan Fenton

      Wow

      Wow it's Ryan Fenton everyone

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      Pretty much. I play at another site, sometimes several times a day. It is just that some people get overly attached to a brand or just doing what everyone else does. It is a game. These that outright copy are doing so for easy cash, and diluting the brand, which is one word for one day, then it is gone.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • First of all there is precedence of this exact game play going back to the 1980s at least (Lingo TV game show [wikipedia.org], for example). Second, the daily game is just a word. You can't copyright every word in the dictionary. The only part that is actual intellectual property is the word "Wordle". So just don't use the word "Wordle" anywhere on your website.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by drhamad ( 868567 )
      That's not "this exact game" If they're not relating it to the actual NYT game Wordle and it was just similar gameplay, the NYT would have little say in the matter. But this (as others are) is literally pulled off the NYT version. Your precedence argument is only relevant if they were trying to patent the algorithm or something like that.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • You ARE the brute squad.

  • So a list of 2309 five letter words is now copyrightable?

    Glad I don't pay for NY Times.

    This stupid stunt is something I thought only Murdoch would stoop to.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kmoser ( 1469707 )
      Hey, those 2,309 words constitute a poem, and it is most definitely copyrightable. Reproducing a copyrighted work one word at a time is still infringement.

  • If I were to type 'CNUTS' as a guess, surely that's a creative act on my part, and hence my copyright, not NYT's

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