The New York Times just bought Wordle, everyone’s favorite free game on the internet.

If you haven’t heard of Wordle, you’re probably not on Facebook. In the past few months, cryptic posts started popping up with a curious green, yellow, and grey grid and numbers that made no sense without any context. It looked like this:

Then they were popping up every day, as more and more users began engage in the game. The game exploded in popularity, and has since had people starting fan pages, tweeting about it, and even diving into the psychology of why everyone seemingly got addicted to the simple game at the same time.

One of the most appealing aspects of the game is the sense of community it invokes: it’s one game per day, and everyone plays the same one. There are no levels to aspire to, no option for binge-gaming, and no way to really one-up other players. It’s pretty perfect in its simplicity — and its free. You get six chances to guess a word. That’s it. That’s the entire game. And many of us are addicted.

Yesterday, The New York Times announced that it had purchased the game from its creator, Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn. They paid a price “in the low seven figures.” He announced the sale on his Twitter page, noting that the game would “be free to play for everyone.”

And because we’ve all loved playing it so much, people are very happy for Wardle!

Josh also insists that your winning streaks will be preserved, parents.

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