Buying Wordle brought ‘tens of millions of new users’ to The New York Times

Screenshot: Wordle

The New York Times bought the hit puzzle game Wordle. Wordle brought an unprecedented tens of millions of new users to The Times.

Wordle was acquired by The Times in January for an undisclosed price. The Times has a collection of games, which include Spelling Bee, Scrabble, Letter Boxed, and Tiles. If you're a word game fan and have never tried Letter Boxed, it's a good one. They all come with an overall subscription to the Times.

The Times has not changed Wordle much except to give it a new URL. It didn't make the game harder. It has begun to add a few nudgings around the app to get you to play some of the company's other games. The Times said it added 387,000 net digital-only subscribers last quarter, but it didn't say how many of them are Wordle players. The Times has a subscription to its cooking content and an overall digital package.

Wordle's virality seems to have waned a bit in recent months, as fewer users are sharing their daily scores in group chats and on social media. That doesn't mean people stopped playing. By the way, I got Wednesday's Wordle in two guesses. Please clap. This is a good sign for Wordle spinoffs. Heardle might be snapped up by Spotify to juice subscriber numbers, and Framed might be the solution to everything that ails Netflix. There is a possibility that Worldle could be a feature of Maps.

The Times has said in the past that it might make Wordle a subscriber-only game, but didn't say anything about it on its earnings call. The Times might just decide that the game is better outside of the paywall.