Relief for Wordle fans - 28th Feb 2022

Viral game Wordle has achieved massive online success, and it's now come to light that the code can be copied, enabling users to continue playing for years. The puzzle, which is web-based rather than an app and is free of ads or data harvesting, requires players to work out a mystery, 5 letter word once a day.

Devised by Reddit engineer Josh Wardle to entertain his partner through lockdown, it's free to play and easy to get into. Players enter their chosen word into a grid and receive colour-coded guidance.

After entering a word, letters which are also in the mystery word, but located elsewhere within it, turn gold. A letter which is both correct and accurately located will turn green. Any letters which don't feature in the mystery word go grey. Players have all day to guess the word but only six attempts to identify it.

The explosion in usage has been extraordinary. Last October, the Wordle website received 5,000 monthly hits, whereas in January, this was 45 million. 66 percent of this traffic originated in the US, Australia and the UK, with players spending a minimum of eight minutes on the site.

The puzzle's recent purchase by the New York Times for in excess of $1 million has caused alarm, with Wordle fans fearing a pay wall. Yet it's also been revealed that the programme's code is freely available. Easily copied and stored, the code's also uncomplicated to interpret and low-tech user guides are available online. Players taking this step are guaranteeing their games can carry on, gratis, for seven more years.

"Effectively, you can keep a version of the game as it exists today with enough data to keep you going for a long time," explained Professor Alan Woodward, a computer scientist from the University of Surrey.