It appears that the #NewYorkTimes has killed #PhoNZErdle, whose site https://intro2psycholing.net/PhoNZErdle_daily/ now says "Unfortunately PhoNZErdle has had to be removed because of copyright issues raised by the New York Times".
Why!? It didn't use the same answers as the NYT version of #Wordle. It didn't use the same list of allowable words. I don't think it used any proprietary source code from Wordle. Heck, it didn't even use the same alphabet!
Is the NYT trying to legally and culturally appropriate all mastermind-like word games? Including much older variants like Jotto and Lingo?
What claim can they possibly have?
So it turns out (unsurprisingly) it's not just #PhoNZErdle they've come for. https://www.404media.co/nytimes-files-copyright-takedowns-against-hundreds-of-wordle-clones/ (Warning: the linked page contains a quotation that includes a vulgar word used by the primary target of the #NewYorkTimes's #Wordle derivatives takedown notice.)
The #NYT's claim is made a bit more explicit there: "The Times’s Wordle copyright includes the unique elements of its immensely popular game, such as the 5x6 grid, green tiles to indicate correct guesses, yellow tiles to indicate the correct letter but the wrong place within the word, and the keyboard directly beneath the grid."
Comparing the features mentioned here to those of #Lingo, it seems that the claim is based on:
giving the player six turns instead of only five, and
using green, instead of red.They also mention the on-screen keyboard, but I'm pretty sure I'd seen one or two on-screen keyboards at the bottom of smartphone screens long before Wordle was invented.
Now I'm no lawyer, but here's an actual expert in #copyright and internet law preemptively rebutting the NYT's claims just over two years ago: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/02/24/wordle-kind-of-rips-off-lingo-a-copyright-lawyer-says-thats-ok.html
@zachdecook
They made a vague reference to "gameplay", too, but it's hard to see anything #Wordle has there that #Lingo didn't already have.
I honestly don't know what will make you safe. It looks to me like it's not really about what the law says; it looks more like it's about who is able to afford the scariest lawyers, and is willing to use them to undertake indiscriminate cultural vandalism in an attempt to become the only game in town, so to speak.