In the slew of Wordle imitators that emerged in the wake of its success last year, there are a few real standouts. There’s Nerdle (opens in new tab), that challenges you to guess a maths equation; Worldle (opens in new tab), which looks like a spelling error but is actually the one where you have to figure out a country from its silhouette; and, on the more intimidating end, there’s Quordle (opens in new tab).

Quordle asks you to solve four Wordles simultaneously, all on one big grid. Every guess you make is applied to all four—even with a generous nine guesses, it’s still a nightmare of brain multitasking. 

But clearly Merriam-Webster thinks it has a bright future ahead of it. The company, known primarily for its US dictionaries, has bought Quordle, according to the game’s official twitter account (opens in new tab). The URL has already changed to reflect the acquisition, and Merriam-Webster has welcomed it to its “family” (opens in new tab) of word games and quizzes. 

If you didn’t realise there was a family of word games and quizzes owned by a dictionary company, we’re in the same boat, but on their site (opens in new tab) you can enjoy such delights as Name That Thing (opens in new tab), Spell It (opens in new tab), What’s That From? (opens in new tab) and What Are You Wearing? (opens in new tab). I’m now starting to wonder whether Quordle has a literal enough name for this collection. 

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Quordle’s certainly not the first word game in the genre to get snapped up. Wordle was, of course, acquired by the New York Times (opens in new tab) at the start of last year for an amount “in the low seven figures”, while Heardle (Wordle with music) was bought by Spotify (opens in new tab) last summer. If you’re a company CEO looking for your own Wordle-like to buy, perhaps as a gift for your secretary, why not have a browse of our list of the best ones (opens in new tab)? I bet you could get Squareword (opens in new tab) for a fair price these days.