As Wordle mania rages, New York Times buys it for ‘low-seven figures'
The New York Times acquired Wordle, adding the popular daily word phenomenon to the newspaper company’s expanding portfolio of games and puzzles. The price wasn’t disclosed, but the Times said it paid in “the low-seven figures.” Wordle gives players six tries to guess a five-letter mystery word. It was created by Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn. Since its debut in October, it has caught fire, with users posting on social media how many guesses it took them to solve the word. The game has millions of daily players, according to the Times. It will initially remain free to new and existing players, the Times said, raising concerns it may eventually go behind a paywall.
The Times is focusing on games as a way to diversify its revenue sources. With Donald Trump’s chaotic presidency over, the newspaper has warned that subscriber growth won’t continue at the rate recorded in 2020.
In December, the Times crossed 1 million subscriptions to its games, which include “Spelling Bee” and crossword puzzles.
AFP Twitter suspended a bot account on Wednesday for spoiling the solution to the next day's Wordle, the wildly popular internet word puzzle.
The game, which only offers one puzzle per day, has amassed millions of players since it came online last year.
But the Twitter profile @wordlinator seemed determined to ruin the fun for participants posting their scores on the social media site.
"The account referenced was suspended for violating the Twitter Rules and the Automation Rules around sending unsolicited @mentions," a Twitter spokesperson told AFP.
The bot account automatically responded to accounts posting their Wordle scores with messages such as "Guess what. People don't care about your mediocre linguistic escapades. To
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