Every Way Wordle Is Different After Moving To The New York Times

Indeed, much of what has made Wordle special are its humble, wholesome roots. Wardle created the site during the pandemic for his word game-loving girlfriend. Wordle‘s colorful little boxes, the interface of the site, and the game’s concept are thus very simple: players get six attempts to guess the five-letter word of the day, and with each attempt, they are informed if they have the correct letters in the correct place in the word. Additionally, Wardle never put ads or paywalls onto his site even after it skyrocketed in popularity, thus keeping Wordle’s aesthetic clean and elegant.

Fans will be happy to know that much of Wordle has not changed. As reported by the New York Times itself, Crossword editor Will Shortz stated he loves the game because of “how simple, pleasant and attractive the computer interface is.” The publication has thus kept much of what makes Wordle special after acquiring it. However, a few new features were added and slight aesthetic tweaks have been made to adapt the game into the New York Times‘s styles. Additionally, there’s also the possibility that the New York Times may paywall Wordle because of the newspaper’s game subscription service.

New Features And Changes In Wordle After NYT Purchase

On the original site for Wordle, players had a few options when it came to diversifying the look and difficulty of the game. The “Dark Mode” option would turn the white background black but keep everything else the same. Players could also turn on “Hard Mode,” which made it to where after a letter was correctly identified and put in the right place, following guesses would have to have that word continue to be placed correctly.

Now with the New York Times, players still have these options with the addition of a “High-Contrast Mode.” This new mode changes the green that indicated letters in the word of the day that were correctly placed to orange, and the yellow that indicated letters that were incorrectly placed to blue. Wordle blocked offensive words following the NYT acquisition as well, so players can no longer guess using inappropriate language.

The last alteration the New York Times made to Wordle was changing its font to match its in-house style. Fans may hope that this is the last change the newspaper makes, as Wordle could eventually fall behind the paywall of the NYT Games subscription. But for now, players can continue enjoying the Wordle experience for free and relatively unchanged.