The New York Times has requested that I shut the archive down
devangthakkar.com
devangthakkar.com
https://web.archive.org/web/20220401002723/https://www.devan...
...it looks like this might have had playable versions of daily Wordle puzzles going back to the start of the game? (Which would be pretty trivial since IIRC Wordle is entirely client-side and they just update the JS each day with the new word?) If so then his statement - "to be honest, I was wondering what took them so long" - would sort of make sense.
EDIT - Github repo before NYT-inspired deletion: https://github.com/DevangThakkar/wordle_archive/tree/23cfba6...
Even more hands off than that. The script contained the entire list of words and each day it just moved to the next entry in the list. It makes sense, in that originating as a fun personal project the author wouldn't want to be burdened with a daily update task.
Edit:
Out of curiosity I had a look at the Wordle on the NYT site, and it's still the same script.
If the list of words for every day is encoded into a static code, why does the wordle archive need to crawl the site each day, or set the system time to different days, just to get the words for different days... Seems to be a bit over engineered to me...
Wordle is a tiny word puzzle game with no stakes. So, while this architecture makes it trivially easy to cheat, there's also zero reason to do so. You're just robbing yourself of the fun in order to... do what, exactly? Brag about it?
I wouldn't complain that wikipedia exists when I am answering a quiz...
I don't think a more complex wordle implementation would solve this. If the whole world is guessing the same word, there will always be someone that tries to spoil it for others, just because they can.
Of course. But what does that matter? All you've done is assign blame. The person still had their game experience ruined. With a different design, that might not have been possible. This is like spam protection -- it's not Gmail's fault that you're receiving spam, but they're the ones in a position to stop it.
If bad actors in person went door-to-door attempting to break in by picking locks, would you say that it is purely the responsibility of the homeowner to ensure that their locks are strong enough?
Really? I had a feeling the game/wordlist changed somewhat after the move to nyt - I guessed they'd put some crossword cryptist on it... But I suppose I was wrong.
Ed: AFAIK the js uses the client side date to pick a word - and today nyt and the ipfs mirror posted here does not share the same solution:
https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html
https://bafybeic4blel5vf4il73n3nzt6vw7npsov6or3cp3myjms4npii...
But it would appear that the difference in previous solution: stairs vs royal(I think ?) might just be slightly different word lists for the solutions... I thought there was much more of an edit.
Initially I suspected that this was NYT watching for how unusually difficult words play out and then changing the answer on the fly to be a simpler word. But I think in reality these were the same changes they made shortly after the acquisition and somehow people have the old JS file cached locally.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/31/why-wordle-game-284-had-tw...
This link (theoretically) can't be taken down.
That link can be "taken down", blocked or limited in other ways.
What can't happen, is that the content it is pointing to, can't be "scrubbed" from the internet. As long as you have the CID (essentially a hash), you'll be able to get it (probably) from some node out there in the world.
It’s essentially the same as if someone made an IPFS mirror of the Microsoft Windows source code.
Maybe cannot be "individually" taken down.
Copyright applies to works & derivative works. Think: movies, music, books, etc.
Patents apply to inventions. Think: methods of doing something to achieve a particular application.
Trademarks apply to things associated with a brand or product. Think: logos, "the Intel sound", the pattern of colours used in the Google logo, the brand name used, particular characters, etc.
I think there can be a little bit of overlap between these, in that a logo might be trademark and also might be a copyrighted work, but generally the distinctions are fairly clear.
There may also be a copyright interest in the "target" and "guessable" word lists as collections, but I'm not certain of the applicable subtleties.
It's much closer to hangman.
So the companies that make these things, in order to exploit the legal regime for profit, work around it. Such as Louis Vuitton or Nike shoes using trademarks as part of their styling. The fashion isn't copyrightable, but if you were to copy it you would violate their trademarks.
These laws are very arbitrary. Much more than the marketing for them suggests.
For example:
> Patents apply to inventions. Think: methods of doing something to achieve a particular application.
Patents, in the most literal sense, are just algorithms.
They are a series of rules that must be followed to achieve certain "inventions" or solve problems in a particular way.
People read patent's summary describing the invention and think that is the patent. It is not. The actual "meat" of the patent is the series of steps needed to achieve that invention.
The idea that software can both be patentable AND copyrightable just goes to show just how far off the rails the whole "IP" stuff is.
In the US. They can be protected in the UK, Germany and France.
A patent, hopefully, captures a truely new and original idea. Where as as copywrite encompass actual work.
One huge problem with patentable ideas is that the idea should not obvious to those in the field, but intails a proof by contradiction. If the idea was obvious to one person, surely it was obvious to many. And is more clearly obvious to anyone who has seen the idea.
Trade marks are only to protect branding, they stop mimicry that doesn’t violate copyright.
Trade secrets are the real secret sauce. They are legally protected and by definition are unpatenable. It’s the only way to keep a competitive edge.
There's absolutely no reason to have visible logos anywhere on clothing or other items unless they're paying you.
The name could be a trademark.
The UI treatment could potentially be trademarked.
The implementation could be copyrighted.
The game mechanics could be patented. (not 100% sure how effective this would be, especially since there might be prior art, and since as a game it may not be a useful invention)
I don't think there's much NYT can do about someone creating a functionally identical game with a slightly different list of words.
Kudos if it was a ‘request’ and hadn’t gone too deep into lawyer mode.
Edit: down voting because you disagree? I'm more than open to hearing other viewpoints on the verbiage.
>compel kəm-pĕl′ transitive verb To force (a person) to do something; drive or constrain: synonym: force. To necessitate or require, as by force of circumstance; demand. To exert a strong, irresistible force on; sway.
I really like the idea of them being able to say "don't worry, you can't get overly addicted because we only offer one a day and don't let you binge." And as owners of the IP, they do have that right.
I used the wordle archive so that I could go back to days I missed. That way I can still share the experience with my family even if I've had a really busy day. It's undeniably a positive and I'm upset that I can't do this anymore.
Several of the variants e.g. Quordle have an unlimited play variant, but I've never felt a desire to use it.
And people might start going to the archive instead of the main site, seeing as it has a major features the main site doesn't. (i.e. ability to keep playing) Obviously they don't want that. They want 100% of your concentration to be on today's word. They want you to look forward to tomorrows puzzle where you can play again. Playing archived games decreases that, as you can satisfy your craving that way.
I sort of miss the archive, but at the same time I am glad it is gone. I like that feeling of "I'm done with Wordle for today" without that nagging "but I can do 100 more .... now where did my morning go?"
This is a rare case where I support a company being protective of its IP.
All I can say is that this is not my experience. In my family WhatsApp people post today's result and we sometimes have a bit of a chat about what it was like. Sometimes we do today's globle and quordle too. The quordle has an infinite play version but I don't think any of us spend much time on it.
I think their motivations are a little bit less altruistic. Which your post helped me figure out. They don’t want an archive because that requires everyone to visit their site at least once a day.
If there is an archive people could skip a day without repercussions.
But I would like to know what I’m missing and appreciate that you may be able to elaborate why.
Kudos for not turning it into a lawsuit.
Please, do tell.
Because they want to make as much money as possible off their acquisition. If someone else is housing a history of the game, and people can go play the game there instead of on NYT, that's a net bad for them. There's no NYT ads or 3rd party tracking pixels on the archive, so it's tapping into their market.
If I gave a fuck about guessing a 5 letter word each day, I personally would prefer to do it in a way that doesn't continue to support the Gray Lady, so I'm going to do it on the Archive instead of the NYT page.
I'd guess they want to quash competitors, and also face pressure from Legal to defend the "Wordle" name.
I'm not in the mood to get into the semantics of "How the NYT is using Wordle to make money" but I think a good faith read of my comment and yours would say we're agreeing: They're doing it to protect an investment that they assume will make them money in the long run.
Sadly, this probably comes down to whoever has the most money wins in court.
[0] https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/...
Might not mean that you should care.
But it does make one wonder a bit about the Internet Archive - and it's future ability to archive static (if interactive) web sites.
You can find a lot of information there, but "why should I care" is something only you can answer, as many people have no reason to care about this - ultimately it's just a little internet game.
Here's a link to the Wikipedia editors' terse description on curated lists:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_in_lists#S...
A fact you may not know is that the creator and his partner curated the two lists of words-accepted-as-guesses and words-eligible-to-be-daily-targets to remove so-called "Scrabble gibberish."
Some mapping companies "invent" non-existing streets on their maps to prove copying.
The design and feel of the site is probably unarguably copyrighted though. While other clones could argue that Wordle is actually a derivation from a much older game, it won't probably help if the design, feel, "dress" and colours are one-to-one to the original thing.
(and words, well, of course. Books are words, right?)
There were some lawsuits about Tetris. You can make a game with the rules like Tetris. But you cannot name it Tetris, and you cannot make it look too much like Tetris.
The HTML, CSS and JavaScript layout out the page is also copyrightable, and the taken-down site is a direct copy of this
Have you literally never heard of text being copyright?
Second guess: crosswords have sufficient creative work involved. A list of random English words with 5 characters?
I think the only likely thing that might be illegal is using the same name. Game concepts are copied all the time, from what I understand. I'm not a lawyer.
Kudos to the guy that wrote it and sold it. I don't see how NYT can monetize it - if they put up a paywall usage goes to 0 real quick.
But there was a lot of controversy around the scrabble word list - I don't recall how that turned out in the end:
https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/09/scrabble-copyright-...