The New York Times purchased word puzzle phenomenon Wordle a few days, but folks worried about the game going behind an internet paywall in the near future can download the game for free and play it offline for at least the next half decade. In the past few weeks, the word guessing game has acquired a viral status and Twitter timelines have been flooded with folks sharing their Wordle scores appearing as yellow and green blocks.
The premise is simple. The player is given six attempts to guess a five-letter word. And ever since the heart-warming story behind the game’s creation came out, the internet apparently fell madly in love with the game. And then came the news of its acquisition, immediately fanning speculation that given its immense popularity, the game might soon be paywalled. For starters, The New York Times charges an annual fee of $39.95 for its puzzles games. Even the official announcement forewarned that the game would “initially” remain free to new and existing players.
Just in case Wordle is slapped with a paywall, internet users have already started downloading the game’s code. And the entire process is pretty simple, almost like a copy-paste job. And the best part is that downloading the game’s files allows users to play the game offline. As spotted by VICE, the game’s building blocks have been set up on a website that hosts 2,135 five-letter words appearing in the puzzler. That’s enough words to play the game each day for at least the next five years. A bunch of users on Twitter have already done the deed and reported that the process works.
A Slippery Slope Of Ethics
To start, head over to the game’s website and download the page as an HTML file. For those opening the website on Chrome, click on the three-dot menu button in the top-right corner, tap on More Tools, followed by Save Page As. Once the save prompt appears, select the Save As HTML option. Once the game has been saved as an HTML, users then need to save the game’s entire world catalog from here (https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/manifest.json) and download the engine that drives its puzzle format from this (https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/main.e65ce0a5.js) page. All the downloaded files need to be saved in the same folder for the game to work offline on a PC. But there are a few caveats. The offline version doesn’t save the winning streaks, and when trying to share the puzzle results online, the green-yellow-black blocks appear in coded form.
Josh Wardle, the game’s creator intended for the game to be free even after the game’s ownership was transferred to The New York Times. Part of the reason why everyone loved the game, aside from the cool backstory, was the fact that its creator wanted people to have some jolly good time without worrying about a fee. Should people download the game while it’s available, is a tricky question. "The particular expression of the software code underlying a game like Wordle will be protected as a literary copyright work under UK copyright law," Nick Allan, legal director at law firm Lewis Silkin, was quoted as saying by the BBC. To put it simply, downloading the game might land users in some copyright issues if they happen to live in the UK. Wordle is now a property of The New York Times, so the ethical move would be to play it the way its owner serves the games — with or without a paywall.