Tech

New York Times takes down third-party Wordle Archive

Stylized illustration of a hypothetical puzzle video game.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Ars Technica)

Wordle Archive—a website that let users play through hundreds of previous daily five-letter Wordle puzzles—has been taken down at the request of Wordle owner The New York Times.

The archival site, which offered a backward-looking play feature that’s not available in the NYT’s official version of Wordle, had been up since early January. But it was taken down last week and replaced with a message saying, “Sadly, the New York Times has requested that the Wordle Archive be taken down.” A Twitter search shows dozens of daily Wordle Archive players who were willing to share their results on social media up through March 7.

“The usage was unauthorized, and we were in touch with them,” a New York Times representative said in response to an Ars Technica comment request. “We don’t plan to comment beyond that.”

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