Beware of Wordle clones: they are popping up on Android’s Play Store too

The new craze of a game that has overtaken social media is a word-guessing game called Wordle. However, Wordle is not an app that you can download from the App Store or Play Store. You can only play it via a browser, as it is a web application.

The official place where you can access and play Wordle is the website powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle, nowhere else. As of now, there is no version made for Android or iOS that you can download from either of the two stores.

History has given us plenty of examples of similar instances. Whenever there is a new hit app that takes the internet by storm, clones always pop up to try and take some of that success for their own. It is all fun and games, but some of these clones are straight-up scams that will fool you into paid subscriptions or one-time payments and never return them to you.

The worst examples related to Wordle clones were spotted by the folks at 9to5Mac, and they were in the App Store, where there was an app with said paid subscriptions. That app has, thankfully, now been removed, so it won’t be fooling anyone else.

However, clones are showing up on Android too, albeit with a seemingly less malicious approach. Some of these clone apps have already been downloaded by thousands of people, which goes to show the level of impact something like this can have.

What is even worse is that the confusion born from these clone versions has caused some legitimate apps to get negative reviews and a tainted reputation. “Wordle” and “Wordle 2” were both applications that existed before the craze of the web-based hit game but are being hurt by the crossfire.

As the hype around Wordle dies out, the clones will too. Make sure to let your friends who also want to play the game know about the official place to do so. Also, when reporting apps, it is good to double-check that they really are clones so that ones like “Wordle” and “Wordle 2” don’t get affected.