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No change to Wordle for savvy users - 28th Feb 2022
Having taken the world by storm, it now turns out that the code for internet phenomenon Wordle is freely available, so players can preserve and use it for years to come. The rudimentary but addictive word game, which offers up one hidden, 5 letter word per day, was dreamed up by Reddit software engineer Josh Wardle in the throes of lockdown to help his partner while away the hours.
Although it looks like an app, Wordle's browser-based and simple in design, unaffected by distracting pop-up ads or data mining. Users get just six stabs at guessing a mystery word, so once players have placed their elected letters on its 5 tile grid, they're given colour-coded clues to decipher.
Provided the letter's included and correctly positioned in the day's word, it'll go green, whereas a letter turns gold to highlight that it's included but incorrectly placed. Grey letters indicate that they're unconnected to the word.
Wordle's experienced a meteoric rise. Having attracted 5,000 monthly players in October 2021, by January 2022 numbers had soared to 45 million. The stats reveal users spend, on average, over eight minutes on the site, with the US, Australia and the UK accounting for 66 percent of traffic.
Wordle's sudden acquisition by the New York Times, for an undisclosed seven-figure sum, has created a stir. However, amidst concerns for the demise of free access that this announcement may signal, it's transpired that anyone can copy and save the open source code for this viral head-scratcher, providing Wordle devotees with seven further years of lightweight distraction.
Written in Javascript, the code appears as plain text for those with the know-how to compile it. There are also how-to guides on hand which outline this procedure.
"Effectively, you can keep a version of the game as it exists today with enough data to keep you going for a long time," mused Professor Alan Woodward, a computer scientist from the University of Surrey.
However, he added, "As you have the words stored locally, it might be tempting to cheat, and where's the fun in that?"
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