If you have been on social media recently, chances are you already know about the uber-popular word-guessing game Wordle by now. It is a simple web-based game where users need to correctly guess a five-letter word through trial-and-error. The game went viral on social media, and as a result, The New York Times bought it from its original owner Josh Wardle recently. Now, worried about the game being paywalled, people are copy-pasting Wordle to their desktop to continue playing it without paying up.

Now, for context, let me give you a quick brief about the whole Wordle situation. Following the massive surge in the popularity of the game, The New York Times recently bought the game for an “undisclosed price in the low seven figures”. It became a part of Times Games, which includes other small games like The Mini, Spelling Bee, and Crossword.

Wordle is a web-based game that generates random words daily, which players are required to guess. However, IT specialist Matt Dovey recently pointed out that Wordle works entirely in the client and can be saved to your desktop to play for free for a good couple of years or more. Dovey took to Twitter to explain this, and you can check out the tweet thread right below.

FWIW, because Wordle works entirely in the client, you can just Save Page As to keep a local copy if you’re worried about the NYT acquisition.The list of future words is already in the code, it just picks the word on the basis of your computer’s date. It’s everything you need.— Matt Dovey 🌻 (@mattdoveywriter) February 1, 2022

Now, if you want to continue playing Wordle for free in the future even if The NYT puts it behind a paywall, follow the steps below to save the game to your desktop.

  • On the website, right-click to open up the context menu.

  • Click the “Save As” button or press Ctrl + S and save the webpage as “Webpage, Complete” on your desktop.

  • Now, you can access Wordle locally in your web browser anytime you want.

This way, even if The NYT puts Wordle behind a paywall in the future, you will be able to play the game for free. It is a nifty trick that can save you a bit of moolah and let you continue playing your favorite word-guessing game.