Word it’s jumping from PHONE to DASH.
Hasbro has partnered with the New York Times, owner of the popular online word puzzle, to create “Word: The Party Game”. The new board game “offers classic Wordle gameplay, but now in a whole new way,” the companies said in a press release.
Hasbro approached the New York Times about making a party game after noticing how popular Wordle had become online, according to Hasbro Gaming senior vice president and general manager Adam Biehl.
“What piqued our interest was … how much fun people were having posting the results on social media,” Biehl said in an exclusive interview with CNN Business. “That’s when we knew there was something special about it.”
“Wordle: The Party Game” is one of Hasbro’s fastest releases, Biehl said, taking less than a year for the team to create it. The new title fits into the company’s portfolio of pop culture games, including Monopoly editions based on “Bridgerton” and “Stranger Things.” Hasbro is paying the Times a license fee to use Wordle.
Hasbro’s game studio created many versions of the game before landing on the one being released.
“We start with what we’re trying to accomplish,” Biehl said, including being “as authentic as possible to the Wordle experience because we want to capture what made consumers really interested in the game.”
In addition, the team aimed to match “the quality the Times is known for,” Biehl said. “It’s been a fun partnership working with them on this.”
Pre-orders start Thursday ahead of the game’s release on October 1. will be sold Hasbro websiteTarget, Amazon and Walmart at a suggested price of $19.99.
HOW TO PLAY
“Wordle: The Party Game” maintains Wordle’s hallmark gameplay, giving players six chances to guess a five-letter word with the help of some color-coded clues (yellow if the letter is correct but in the wrong place and green if the letter is in the right place).
In the board game edition, four different versions are available to play: quick, timed, team, and classic.
The classic version pits players against each other as they try to guess the letters of the word assigned by the “Wordle Host”. Players take turns hosting, and each round ends after six tries, unless the correct word is guessed. The host uses the colored tiles to place over the letters to indicate what is correct. The timed and quick versions limit the amount of time players have to guess.
Perhaps the most significant difference from the online game is the team version, in which two people play on a single board against another team and guess the word their opponent has chosen.
“We know that people love to have a game night and invite their friends to play. They are social experiences, so it’s a way to share, connect and create memories,” Biehl said.
Scoring is similar to how the online version encourages players to get the word in the fewest tries. The fewer tries a player needs, the fewer points they will score, and the player with the fewest points at the end of the game wins.
The board game contains whiteboards and dry-erase markers, as well as protective partitions to prevent cheating and green and yellow tokens to provide clues. Also included is an official list of words to use, compiled by the Times.
Although it’s a family game, Biehl said Hasbro hopes the demographic “skews toward a slightly older audience” that mirrors its other word games like Scrabble and Boggle. “We know those games are played by a slightly older audience, young adults and adults, but we want to make sure there’s an entrance for younger gamers because we know a lot of families like to connect with games,” he added.
WORLD GROWTH
Josh Wardle, a Brooklyn-based software engineer who previously worked at Reddit, launched the game online in October 2021 and it quickly became a cultural phenomenon. The New York Times bought Wordle for “low seven figures” in January 2022, joining its growing portfolio of online games which also includes the Crossword, the Mini and the Spelling Bee.
Turning Wordle into a board game helps the Times keep its “existing audience engaged with Wordle, and it also introduces Wordle to all new audiences,” Jonathan Knight, the Times’ head of games, told CNN Business. “We are delighted with the collaboration.”
The purchase of Wordle helped increase the number of digital subscriptions for the paper as it aims to diversify its revenues beyond advertising. Subscription revenue from digital products increased 26.3% in the first quarter from a year ago, to $226.8 million, which represents more than 40% of total sales.
“Wordle brought an unprecedented number of tens of millions of new users to the Times, many of whom stayed on to play other games, fueling our best quarter to date in Net Subscriber Additions to Games,” said CEO Meredith. Kopit Levien in the May earnings release. She added that the company gained 387,000 net digital subscribers in the quarter and now has 9.1 million total subscribers.
Wordle is still free to play, but the Times puts its other games behind a paywall after a limited number of free spins. Knight said the company is focused on expanding Wordle’s presence by adding it to the Times’ main news app and the Crossword app.
“We are very pleased with the ongoing commitment and enthusiasm behind Wordle,” said Knight.
Paul R. La Monica of CNN Business contributed to this report