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What's happened?
The New York Times' Games section - famous for The Crossword puzzle, among other things - has announced it acquired one of the world's most popular word games and cultural phenomenons: Wordle.
Why does it matter?
By buying Wordle, the New York Times said it's looking to "entertain more solvers with puzzles every day - especially during these anxious times."
What's my take?
We all love a good puzzle. I remember working at The Times (in London) when Sudoku was all the rage and how the newspaper did a deal with the man responsible for bringing the Japanese puzzle to the UK to have it published in the paper each day.
Sudoku was a massive hit, boosting circulation and sales, and spawning a plethora of money-making puzzle books in the process.
Some 18 years later and I see Wordle repeating that story, albeit for a different Times newspaper.
And the US paper will likely follow the same playbook, by trying to get as many people hooked as possible, before raising a paywall to boost subscriptions and rounding out the year with a Christmas stocking compendium, by which point most of us will have probably have moved on to another fad.
Still, hats off to Wordle creator Josh Wardle, and hats of to the NYT. A low seven figure to buy the puzzle sounds like a steal.
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