Is that how it works? Can you really "own" IP of something as simple?

I thought anyone could implement their own without having to pay the original.

Josh Wardle really lucked out by both accidentally having the best name for that game, and it hitting a cultural firestorm quite quickly. IIRC, NYT are mostly going after other implementations if they have similar names.

You'd need to grow super super large so they'd want to acquire you for your audience.