> I could take an ad

Why?

There is objectively nothing that NYT could add to the game to make it more interesting. It can only make it worse.

Plus, the "share" mechanism is obviously not an invasion of privacy or a tracking beacon. It just puts a cute unicode game board in your clipboard, as far as I can see.

> takes 2 minutes per day

I feel stupid.

Vowels are now behind a paywall.

+1 on everything you said, except it takes me more than 2 minutes per day. :D

The minute NYT starts to mess with it, clones are going to pop like mushrooms.

There will be one ad but it will be Punch the Monkey and it will hover over the keyboard until you go to type. It will then move to the row below the one you are guessing.

Looking through the rest of NYT games, I can see this becoming a pay to play thing pretty soon.

They will absolutely change it.

The question is: would anyone pay low seven figures just for the privilege of hiding the same thing? They'd expect this investment to return few times. They'd either start pushing "better" (different) version to subscribed people, splitting the community. Or, as you mentioned, introduce ads. But I don't think just acquiring a channel to display ads was the goal (the article mentions the goal to grow subscriber base), because it's a fad that will fade away- good chances are this will happen before they manage to show enough ads to recoup the initial investment.

> No ads, no pay to play, no upgrades, no sign in, no social graph

yet.

The NYTimes mobile app has a section at the very bottom of the scroll with 5(+1) games. The +1 is for the crossword puzzle, which is included in mini form whole the full chonker requires its own subscription. I image they are going to give wordle top billing in the section. Maybe there'll be a page anyone can visit, but I think they'll use it to keep subscribers returning to the app daily, having to scroll past something they'll want to read on their way, seeing some adds and giving them one more reason not to stop the renewal charges.

I'm expecting ads and also a hyperlink in the sharing copypasta at the very least.