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Quordle is one of the most popular and difficult Wordle clones. Instead of solving just one linguistic puzzle per day, you have to solve four puzzles at once. And now it’s owned by Merriam-Webster, a dictionary company that seems to be turning more and more from definitions to online games.
“Happy to announce that Quordle has been acquired by @MerriamWebster,” the game’s creator, Freddie Meyer, recently announced on Twitter. “I can’t think of a better home for this game. Lots of new features and fun to come, so stay tuned!”
After the initial Wordle craze started to die down somewhat, some power users started looking for weirder and more challenging side effects. There’s a math variant called Nerdle, one that keeps changing the answer called Absurdle, and many, many more. Then there’s a whole subgenre of Wordle clones that just keep piling more and more puzzles together. Dordle makes you decide two. Duotrigordle makes you try 32. With only four, Quordle has always felt like “just the right” amount of Goldilocks masochism in Wordle.
And now it belongs to Merriam-Webster. Mayer did not immediately disclose the exact dollar value of the sale, but it comes roughly a year after The New York Times purchased the original Wordle for a reportedly low seven-figure sum. The idea was for the media platform to grow its gaming division, an increasingly lucrative part of its business, even if it didn’t immediately put Wordle behind a paywall.
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Merriam-Webster, which is actually owned by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., controlled by Swiss investment banker Jacqui Safra, appears to be interested in such a game. As PC Gamer points out, the dictionary-turned-online-reference-depot already offers a number of other puzzle games, brain teasers, and knowledge tests. That’s probably a better reason to visit the site than looking up the meaning of a word or synonym, which Google will instantly provide you with from the rival Oxford English Dictionary.
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