Wordle Vs Worldle: New York Times Files Lawsuit Over Similarity Between Hit Games

It was one of the great comforts of lockdown, but now Wordle is embroiled in a legal battle with a similarly named game.

The Guardian newspaper reports that Wordle’s owner, The New York Times, has filed a lawsuit against Kory McDonald, the creator of Worldle – the challenge of guessing a location from Google street views.

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The NYT claims that this causes confusion to subscribers because of the similarity in appearance and title between the two games. But McDonald told the BBC they are very different: “Wordle is about words, Worldle is about the world, Flaggle is about flags.”

The Guardian quotes the US Patent and Trademark Office, which says: “Trademarks don’t have to be identical to be confusingly similar.”

Wordle – the deceptively simple challenge of having six attempts to guess a five-letter word, a new puzzle set daily – was developed in 2021 by Josh Wardle to entertain his partner during the long months of lockdown. It was bought by The New York Times in 2022 for a reported seven-figure sum.

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