Wordle is dead, long live Wordle.
New York Times Games announced via tweet that game creator Josh Wardle’s website will no longer host a playable version of Wardle’s megahit word-guessing game Wordle, and will now be fully migrating to the New York Times‘ own page starting June 9, 2022.
The clock for the original Wordle link has been ticking since the gaming wordsmiths at the New York Times acquired Wordle for an undisclosed seven-figure amount, promising at the time that Wordle would “initially remain free.” No updates on whether this change will result in Wordle becoming potentially less free when the switch occurs.
The first clear convergence between Wardle’s edition of Wordle and the New York Times came on February 17, 2021, when the sites’ daily solutions did not match up. The ensuing confusion among players led the New York Times to update their Wordle FAQ to reflect that they had updated their acceptable word list and thus may run different solutions from the originally hosted version of the game.
Some of the list updates were part of the NYT‘s endeavor to eliminate swear words from the game’s pool of guessable worlds.
Why is today’s word different for different people?
Since then, the solutions have mostly matched up (mostly), but the divergence won’t matter once Wardle’s site goes down and NYT Games takes over as the singular online location to play.
What will matter is players maintaining their original site Wordle streak data and porting it over to the New York Times site, which is actually possible thanks to a tool created by tech writer Seth Michael Larson, which can easily port over the site information and keep streaks going once the switch officially happens.
Happy guessing, Wordle fans. And don’t forget to update your bookmarks.
