As Wordle Hits 1000, the NY Times Gets More Aggressive In Its Sales Pitch

Today, we look at how the New York Times has now chosen to get more aggressive in its use of Wordle to get people to sign up with the newspaper.

Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of pop culture history that interests me that doesn’t quite fit into the other features.

Today is Wordle’s 1000th word (it was a bit underwhelming of a “special” word, to be honest), and it marks the second (maybe third?) day of the Times now requiring players to sign up with the Times to be able to have access to their streaks and past stats.

This is the most aggressive move that the Times has made since purchasing Wordle in early 2022. At the time of the purchase, I noted that the Times has to be careful with Wordle, as one of the things that makes people LIKE it so much is that it doesn’t require a subscription, so I noted that the Times really had to make sure that utility was kept, as that was such an important part of the game’s popularity – people liked it because it is EASY to play.

And to be frank, they HAVE been quite good with it, as we’re now two years later without much problems. They’ve added ads, which is fine, and I think they did a clever bit when they started requiring people to subscribe if they wanted to carry their stats from one computer to another. That’s the sort of usefulness that’s SO specific that I don’t think it was too big of a deal to offer it as a “plus.”

Well, now you have to sign in (still for free, mind you) to access your stats PERIOD now, including your streak. You can still share your score for TODAY for free, but anything beyond that you’ll need to sign in. It’s a big change, but, you know what, again, it’s still for free, and it’s still just “added” content beyond the basic play of “Show up for free, play Wordle, share your score” that I am still cool with it. It’s getting kind of on the edge, though, of hitting “you need to register to play,” and that’s the bridge too far. Hopefully they never get there.

Happy 1000 editions, Wordle!

Thanks to my pal, Chris, for mentioning this, and reminding me to write about it. If anyone has any pop culture bit that you’d like me to discuss, drop me a line at brian@poprefs.com

As you can tell, I’ve been away – I was on vacation, and then having to play catch-up on my main job when I got back, so I’ve let Pop Culture References fall behind a bit, I’ll try to catch up on my women’s spotlight episodes.