I enjoy playing Wordle, though I’m not very skilled at it. I wasn’t excited when The New York Times took over the game.
However, I understood why they wanted it and why the creator chose to step away from its sudden popularity. So, I sighed and prepared to continue playing on the new website.
When the switch happened, I clicked on the usual powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle link.
The address bar is now shows www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html. I shrugged and got ready for my daily word challenge.
Then—nothing.
The screen was blank—no error message, no internet issue warning—just an empty page.
Annoyed, I did not want to waste time, so I closed the tab and tried again. It still didn’t work.
Was Wordle down? No. I could open it on my Pixel 6, an incognito browser, and Safari.
No one else at The Verge had issues, either. I assumed it was a glitch and played on my phone.
For the next few days, the problem persisted. It felt like fate—or maybe The Verge’s IT team—was stopping me from playing at work.
But my stats, as unimpressive as they were, were saved on this computer. I felt frustrated.
Finally, I decided to search for answers. After some digging, I found the solution—on Reddit.
It wasn’t just me. Others also couldn’t access their morning Wordle game. The reason?
They subscribed to The New York Times.
Some users had trouble with Wordle because of cookies saved by the Times in their browsers.
The issue affected Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. The solution was to remove all cookies from the Times.
If you’re facing the same issue, here’s how to remove them in Chrome. (For other browsers, a quick search should help.)
- Click the three dots in the upper-right corner.
- Go to Settings > Security and Privacy > Cookies and other site data > See all cookies and site data.
- Use the search field in the upper right and type “nytimes.”
- Click “Remove All Shown”.
That’s it. After doing this, I visited the PowerLanguage URL, clicked it, and landed on the Wordle page (now with the NY Times address), along with my stats.
Now, I can start my mornings again with coffee, toast, and Wordle—though I haven’t solved it in under four tries for a week…
