I completely forgot about Wordle until I saw this. Its a free-to-play game, advertising money is the only way to make anything on it, same as many other games like that. If you make it a paid game then usage likely drops off a cliff.

Its unfortunate that small fun games end up like this, I don't blame NYT, its just how consumers and micro-games* industry work. Does NYT do ad-free for their subscribers?

* micro-games: small, casual, free games - is there another word for them? I want to say puzzle games is really the genre these typically fall into.