I don't understand how this game can be commercialized. Crosswords actually have to be written and the quality of the game relates to how much effort goes into making it. Anyone with a dictionary file can host a World clone.
Not sayings its a bad game--its a great idea--just don't see what the value is in buying it. I'm not even sure what exactly they bought, it doesn't really have any monetization/userbase/IP.
The obvious commercialization route I can think of is the following: every time you get a yellow letter you make an NFT; every time you get a green letter you make an NFT. Then you can provide zero knowledge proof to other people that you have all those NFTs, and compound interest over time. For the NYT it's all about supporting artistic expression you see /s
Comics of the new era. Just a thing which keeps some group of users coming to your site every day. Keeps existing readers happy as they can complete their wordle between reading news. New users trickle in slowly as they complete their wordle in NYT.com so easy to click to new section and get hooked. Just adding nyt.com link to the Share snippet will bring in some number of possible new readers.
Not sayings its a bad game--its a great idea--just don't see what the value is in buying it. I'm not even sure what exactly they bought, it doesn't really have any monetization/userbase/IP.