For all those who take some pride in playing Quordle, the five-letter word game best known for being four times as difficult as Wordle, your word search is vindicated. Iconic dictionary brand Merriam-Webster has bought the popular online puzzle and announced it on Thursday.
Merriam-Webster, owned by Encyclopedia Britannica, quietly acquired the game, which launched shortly after Wordle became an online phenomenon in late 2021.
Quordle has a lot in common with Wordle. Where Wordle asks you to solve a five-letter word puzzle in five tries, Quordle asks you to simultaneously solve four five-word puzzles in nine tries.
Both present you with a standard virtual keyboard, and after entering a guessed five-letter word, letters appear on all four-word boards. The correct letters in the correct places are green, and the correct letters in the wrong places are orange. Yes, like Wordle.
The big difference is that one set of letters is instantly applied to all four puzzles, which is why Quordle is considered much more difficult. You are solving four puzzles at once and with only nine attempts.
News of the acquisition was announced on Twitter by the Quordle account and now the Quordle URL https://www.quordle.com is resolved in a Merriam-Webster URLs.
I’m delighted to announce that @MerriamWebster has acquired Quordle. I can’t think of a better home for this game. Lots of new features and fun to come, so stay tuned!January 20, 2023
Quordle doesn’t have the same kind of rabid fanbase as Wordle (perhaps he’s just too tough), but Merriam-Webster’s endorsement could change that.
What most people didn’t know until Friday, however, is that Merriam-Webster bought Quordle last year.
“The founder was a big fan that we were a home for the product… Our editors and I were big fans. Negotiations were quick and happy,” Merriam-Webster president Gregory Barlow told me Friday.
Barlow said that after the acquisition for an undisclosed sum, the dictionary website made subtle changes to Quordle, such as adding the Merriam-Webster logo last month. However, it wasn’t until they migrated the entire Quordle platform and URL to Merriam-Webster’s servers on Thursday (January 19), that Quordle creator Freddie Meyer shared the news on Twitter.
While the URL is different, Quordle fans shouldn’t expect any big changes.
“I don’t have any changes planned. We have some new features and maybe some new game types, but the core game that people play every day, I don’t expect to change.”
More importantly, Merriam-Webster has no plans to put Quordle behind a paywall. That should please a lot of devoted gamers. According to Barlow, 29.7 million users have played Quordle 410 million times in the last six months.
Is there, I asked Barlow, any concern about The New York Times going after the now more prominent Quordle because of his similarities to Wordle?
“No. It’s definitely not copying Wordle. We really like Quordle because it’s a very different game. Having to make four words introduces very different gameplay types and tactics.”
And, yes, Barlow is a Quordle player, and that was long before Merriam-Webster bought the game.
