Wary ‘Wordle’ fans are saving offline versions amid paywall fears

After the New York Times (NYT) announced that it had purchased Wordle for a price “in the low seven figures”, some fans concerned about the future of the game’s free status have downloaded six years-worth of Wordle puzzles as a playable offline game.

The future of Wordle – which is set to eventually move to the NYT‘s own website – is up in the air at the moment. While creator Josh Wardle said that the game will “be free to play for everyone” when it moves to the NYT, a statement from the company only said that it will “initially remain free to new and existing players.”

Some fans have interpreted this as suggesting that Wordle could potentially be moved behind a paywall, as several other NYT-owned games are subscription-based.

As spotted by PC Gamer, this has resulted in some people finding a way to download Wordle so that they can continue to access it in the future.

One Twitter user shared that the game “has a daily puzzle all the way until 2026 built into the code,” and the only network it’s connected to is Google Analytics. As a coder going by the username Mcclure then added, this meant that the currently-available version can be downloaded and then played in an offline state.

“I was planning to quit Wordle when the NYT started to add tracking cookies or whatever but I might just switch to playing this way instead,” added Mcclure, who then explained how other fans could do the same. That being said, Mcclure warns that fans of Wordle shouldn’t “read this thread in 6 months and go download something claiming to be a Wordle archive. Trust only what you saved yourself.”

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