Merriam-Webster acquires popular Wordle clone, Quordle

Quordle, the word-solving game that emerged at the height of Wordle’s popularity, has been acquired by Merriam-Webster, as first reported by TechCrunch. The game now lives directly on Merriam-Webster’s website, rather than on its own.

“I’m delighted to announce that Quordle was acquired by @MerriamWebster,” a post on Quorlde’s Twitter account reads. “I can’t think of a better home for this game. Lots of news features and fun to come, so stay tuned!”

Quordle is just one of many spinoffs that tried to piggyback off of the success of Wordle, which had users posting their scores across Twitter and competing with friends to solve the word of the day with the least guesses.

Unlike Wordle, which gives you six guesses to figure out a five-letter word, Quordle quadruples the challenge by making you solve four five-letter words at once with nine guesses. Both games give you new words to solve on a daily basis.

Wordle, which was created by Josh Wardle in 2018, was acquired by The New York Times for an undisclosed seven-figure sum last year, joining the outlet’s existing lineup of crossword puzzles and games. The game became so popular that Apple had trouble keeping copycats off the App Store (Wordle didn’t have an app at the time). Even Spotify got in on the trend by creating Heardle, a Wordle-like game that gives you five chances to figure out the name of a song based on increasingly long snippets.