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People are missing the point - NYT paid to have THE wordle of the day - talking to other people about your specific battle with that day's word was 99 percent of the fun.

The act of whipping up a quick clone, while a a balm to the ego and a fun exercise for junior devs, does not recreate the social phenomenon.

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I note that all future Wordle words are already known, so it would be trivial to make a "compatible" Wordle.

Trivial and, presumably, illegal.

How could it possibly be illegal? There is no IP protection for Date % words.length

Copyright. Wardle and his partner chose the words.

That's what I'd expect, copyright on the word list. However, IANAL and I would love to see some proper analysis on the legal status of clones, especially identical ones with the same word list.

You can have a perfect clone of wordle running in a couple of minutes, but I'm certain that would be copyright infringement.

There is a copyright on databases for exactly that reason.

Exactly. They paid a million bucks for the free marketing and built in audience. They're buying the audience.

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