In a quarterly earnings report in May, The Times said the acquisition brought the media company “tens of millions of unprecedented new users, many of whom stayed to play other games.”
Hasbro approached The New York Times to create the board game, Adam Biehl, senior vice president and general manager of Hasbro Gaming, told CNN Business, after the board game company noticed how bad Wordle had become. popular. Biehl said the board game is one of the fastest launches the company has ever undertaken.
Fans of the word game will notice that the rules for the in-person board game are a bit different. In the board game, players take turns coming up with five-letter words – like “print” or “paper” – and the other players try to guess the word in a minimum of tries. As in the original game, players will receive yellow and green tiles if they use a letter in the correct word. But, unlike the original, players will compete against each other. Players score points each round for the number of attempts it takes to correctly guess a word. The player with the fewest points at the end of the game wins. The game is equipped with whiteboards to maximize replayability.
Wordle creator Josh Wardle originally designed the game as a side project for his partner, who loves playing word games. Wardle decided to publicly host the game last October. By early January, more than 2 million people were playing Wordle every day. In a statement posted on Twitter after The Times acquired the game, Wardle wrote that while it was “incredible to see a game bring so much joy to so many,” it was also “a bit overwhelming. After all, I’m just one person.
Wordle has created a mania of word game alternatives, all inspired by the original. The two-player game Word Fight combines the original concept of Wordle with the back-and-forth of Words With Friends. Then there’s Worldle – note the extra “l” – which gives players six tries to guess a country or territory based on an outline of its shape. The National Gallery of Art created Artle as an imitator for art lovers. And for music lovers, there’s Heardle, which plays the first second of a song and asks users to guess what it is.
On Tuesday, Spotify acquired Heardle for an undisclosed amount.
The Times and Hasbro plan to release the board game version of Wordle in October. You can pre-order the box set on Amazon and Target for $19.99.
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