The NY Times Challenges ‘Worldle’s’ Name As The War On ‘Wordle’-likes Continues

Whenever we talk about Wordle, the simple Mastermind-like vocabulary game, it’s important to remember that it wasn’t always owned and operated by the New York Times. Before the Times, the game was operated by its creator, Josh Wardle, who flatly insisted that the game not be monetized nor protected or enforced over any kind of intellectual property rights. But after the Times bought the rights to the game, all of that changed. The paper began going after all kinds of Wordle spinoffs over IP concerns, including the Wordle Archive and alternative language versions of the games for those who wanted to play it, but not in English.

And now we learn that the NY Times is still at it, with news that the paper is also going after Worldle, a spinoff of Wordle that has nothing to do with words or vocabulary, but where you instead have to guess a location based on Google Streetview images.

The New York Times is fighting to take down a game called Worldle, according to a legal filing viewed by the BBC, in which The Times apparently argued that the geography-based game is “creating confusion” by using a name that’s way too similar to Wordle.

Worldle is “nearly identical in appearance, sound, meaning, and imparts the same commercial impression” to Wordle, The Times claimed.

What’s impressive about all of this is the speed and determination by which the Times has chosen to act as the antithesis to Wardle’s handling of the game and situations like this. The company applied to trademark Wordle the day after it closed on the purchase of the rights to the game, something Wardle never pursued. And then the threats and takedowns began. It’s as though Robin Hood handed his bow and arrow to another person only to have that person declare that it was time to rob from the poor to give to the rich.

Not to mention that it’s not like the NY Times, for all of its aggressive enforcement activity, has been fulsome in doing so. There are still a zillion Wordle clones and otherwise inspired games out there that use similar names that are living without threat, as of yet. And while the Times claims that Worldle’s existence is confusing the public and taking away from its own game, the similarity in their names actually seems to be working for the Times, rather than against it.

Today, millions visit the Times site daily to play Wordle, but the Times is seemingly concerned that some gamers might be diverted to play Worldle instead, somehow mistaking the daily geography puzzle—where players have six chances to find a Google Street View location on a map—with the popular word game.

This fear seems somewhat overstated, since a Google search for “Worldle” includes Wordle in the top two results and suggests that searchers might be looking for Wordle, but a search for Wordle does not bring up Worldle in the top results.

The NY Times doesn’t have to do any of this. It didn’t even have to trademark the name of its purchased game at all, actually. Wardle had no problem attracting players to his game even after the so-called clones came to be. In fact, the public did a wonderful job of policing that sort of things itself, all without the help of any intellectual property or lawyers. But the moment it became a corporate property, all of that changed.

The creator of Worldle is vowing to fight this attempted takedown, but he also seems resigned to the idea that he might have to change the name of the game.

McDonald told the BBC that he was disappointed in the Times targeting Worldle. He runs the game all by himself, attracting approximately 100,000 players monthly, and said that “most of the money he makes from the game goes to Google because he uses Google Street View images, which players have to try to identify.” The game can only be played through a web browser and is supported by ads and annual subscriptions that cost less than $12.

“I’m just a one-man operation here, so I was kinda surprised,” McDonald told the BBC, while vowing to defend his game against the Times’ attempt to take it down. “There’s a whole industry of [dot]LE games,” McDonald told the BBC. “Wordle is about words, Worldle is about the world, Flaggle is about flags…Worst-case scenario, we’ll change the name, but I think we’ll be OK.”

While true, that would be entirely too bad. There’s no reason any of that has to happen. Millions still play Wordle these days, and the six-figure user count playing Worldle is obviously not some kind of threat to the NY Times’ property.

But because the NY Times couldn’t be bothered to act human and awesome, even just this once, or even honor the wishes of the actual creator of the game, well, here we are.