[gowld]

There is no Wordle IP except the name and the color scheme.

Developer time would cost $10K.

Customer base... who like wordle because it's a simple, clean, free, not NYT.

[prawn]

They could work around that last point pretty easily. Add NYT logo top left, add NYT puzzles promo and sub up-sell on the stats page after the daily play. That could be done in a way that wasn't overbearing.