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Comment by jonatanheyman | Hacker News Reader

As the writer of the post, I would love to hear Apple's side of the story. The reason I didn't include more quotes from Apple was that they never cited anything other than "resembles Wordle" and "leverages Wordle" in their replies. But clearly, given that they don't apply these rules when it comes to other apps (such as Scrabble, Minesweeper, Tetris, etc.), there is something else going on.

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With respect, you don't know that they aren't attempting to take action on those other apps. Wordle may be a recent copyright issue since NYT has purchased the original. It seems like their rules do apply to these other apps but they just haven't gotten the attention that Wordle has so there's less bias towards those.

Thankfully (IMO), you can't patent game ideas. There's no legal action NYT can take (and expect to win) to shut down any games that build on the same game rules.

However, even if you disagree with me, and think that there should be no app implementing Wordle-style gameplay on App Store. What's your opinion on Minesweeper, Tetris, or Tic-tac-toe? Should no iOS versions of those games exist? Remember that Apple only ever refers to the original Wordle website in their rejections and never even acknowledges the existence of Wordle clones.

What about Scrabble? If they were applying their rules consistently they would surely kick out Words With Friends, but what about Wordfeud? Should they kick out Wordfeud because Scrabble implementations already existed on the web?

WHat does "attempting to take action on those other apps" mean? Apple still lists them on the app store for download.

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