He chooses a different one himself every evening for a new game the following day.
“It’s pretty humbling to think that so many people play every month,” he said.
“I didn’t expect it to have this sort of success at all.”
He is not the only one riding on the coat-tails of Wordle’s success. Others include:
Quordle, a set of four words to guess at the same time
Nerdle, a maths-based challenge
Heardle, which is based on identifying music
There’s even another game called Worldle, which involves identifying countries by their outlines.
The New York Times declined to say whether it intended to pursue them as well.
Speaking to the BBC last year, its head of games, Jonathan Knight, said imitation was “the best form of flattery”.
“We’ve always been fine with [similar games] and think that they just help keep the game fresh and alive for people,” he said then.
This is not, though, the first time the New York Times has resorted to the courts to protect its prize game.
In March 2024, a Shetland dialect version of Wordle said it would be shutting down following a copyright challenge from the publishing group.
Prof David Levine, a copyright expert at Elon University School of Law, suggested the writing might be on the wall for Mr McDonald’s project too.
He said the one-letter difference between the two names was potentially problematic, and added there were also “other aspects of likely consumer confusion”.
“You’ve got the pronunciation,” he told the BBC.
“I mean, I I have to make an effort here to say Wordle versus Worldle.”
Mr McDonald said he was disappointed legal action was being taken against him, but insisted he was undaunted.
“I’m just a one-man operation here, so I was kinda surprised,” he said.
“Worst-case scenario, we’ll change the name, but I think we’ll be okay.”
Additional reporting by Franchesca Hashemi
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