A third-party website that hosts Wordle Archive has been removed due to legal pressure from The New York Times, which owns the Wordle trademark. Released in early January this year, Wordle Archive allowed users to play prior five-letter puzzles featured by the newspaper.
Why The New York Times had Wordle Archive removed
One day after acquiring the original Wordle game from creator Josh Wardle, The New York Times trademarked the Wordle name on February 1. This provided the newspaper with the appropriate legal pressure to ask any other entities with the Wordle name, including Wordle Archive, to cease and desist operations.
As such, the site which used to host Wordle Archive has since replaced the game with the following message:
“Thank you for playing the Wordle Archive, and for all your nice comments and feedback that helped make the site better.
Sadly, the New York Times has requested that the Wordle Archive be taken down. However, you can still play the daily Wordle over on their official site.”
The New York Times representative briefly told Ars Technica that “[t]he usage was unauthorized, and we were in touch with them.”
As the NYT Mini crossword is partially monetized by giving users a playable archive of its older puzzles, there’s a financial incentive for the NYT to take down third-party websites that host Wordle Archive.
It’s important to note that The New York Times doesn’t have copyright protection over the gameplay of Wordle, since the idea behind it has been a part of other games like Jotto and Lingo. However, due to its trademark for Wordle, other variants of the game like Crosswordle or Worldle might be in danger of being too close to the name.
Luckily, if you wish to play Wordle Archive, there are other sites out there with that feature as well. There’s an archived version of the game on the Internet Archive in case you want access to the original thing.
