“The Wordle clones appear to have been removed from the App Store”

Wordle has been remarkably popular for a free app without any marketing effort behind it.

By my reckoning it crossed the International Adele Line on 2022-01-04:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=wordle,adele

Are there any aspects of Wordle that can be patented? AFAIK, game mechanics cannot be patented unless they are demonstrably novel (whatever that means).