Disaster A Note About Today’s Wordle Game - Guess what today's answer was supposed to be? Hint: related to an ongoing culture war

It’s been just over three months since The New York Times acquired Wordle, the hugely popular puzzle created by Josh Wardle. Wordle continues to delight millions of people every day, but as we move it over to The Times’s technology, we have continued to discover challenges.

Today, for example, some users may see an outdated answer that seems closely connected to a major recent news event. This is entirely unintentional and a coincidence — today’s original answer was loaded into Wordle last year.

At New York Times Games, we take our role seriously as a place to entertain and escape, and we want Wordle to remain distinct from the news.

But because of the current Wordle technology, it can be difficult to change words that have already been loaded into the game. When we discovered last week that this particular word would be featured today, we switched it for as many solvers as possible.

You won’t receive the outdated version if you have refreshed your browser window. But we know that some people won’t do that and, as a result, will be asked to solve the outdated puzzle.

We want to emphasize that this is a very unusual circumstance. When we acquired Wordle in January, it had been built for a relatively small group of users. We’re now busy revamping Wordle’s technology so that everyone always receives the same word. We are committed to ensuring that tens of millions of people have a gratifying and consistent experience, every day.

Thank you for your patience while we work on making improvements to Wordle. We wouldn’t be here without our amazing community of solvers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/09/crosswords/a-note-about-todays-wordle-game.html (A)

Spoiler

fetus

As noted above, some players who haven't refreshed recently might get a different word today: FETUS. The New York Times swapped the word out due to the recent leak of a draft Supreme Court decision which suggests that a majority of the justices may soon vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 court decision that protected the right to terminate a pregnancy. "At New York Times Games, we take our role seriously as a place to entertain and escape, and we want Wordle to remain distinct from the news," the Times said in a note about the glitch.

https://mashable.com/article/wordle-today-answer-may-9#:~:text=As noted above,about the glitch. (A)

 

[mario if smoke weed]

The lord has a sick sense of humor. I wish there was a live reaction for this.

 

[Fomo Hoire]

... Judging by how hysterical they're all being, wouldn't FETUS have triggered them any other day as well? Maybe less so, but it should never have been a good idea.

 

[DuckSucker]

I mean, I'd be like 'wtf wordle?' What a weird word to guess. Any time a word like that would come up in a word game like this. They dont put words like "womb" "uterus" "sphincter" "testicle", whatever, like biological/medical terms in a word game, in my mind. I dont know why I think that way but I kinda do. I think of them as being more like common vernacular, or language 'suitable' for a young adult novel. Not even because Im a prude but when Im trying to think of words, my mind just isnt in that space.

 

[SNEED.EXE]

At New York Times Games, we take our role seriously

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

This game is a psyop but at least this is funny.

 

[kcbbq]

This game is a psyop but at least this is funny.

I'm picturing their faces as they aborted FETUS out of existence. Probably giggling about how clever they are.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

It's not murder, it's just a clump of cells. NO! HOW DARE YOU WRITE THAT THING'S DEFINITION! IT DOESN'T EXIST AND WE WOULD CENSOR THE TERM IF WE COULD!

I wish everyone involved with this decision were aborted.

 

[WhatInTheActualFuck]

... Judging by how hysterical they're all being, wouldn't FETUS have triggered them any other day as well? Maybe less so, but it should never have been a good idea.

Recent events have me convinced that "CHILD" would have been even more triggering to those loons.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Wordle continues to delight millions of people every day, but as we move it over to The Times’s technology, we have continued to discover challenges.

The game so full of challenges you could save the HTML file and play it forever.

 

[potato fan]

Nigger
What do I win?

 

[Bob Loblaw Law Blog]

Nigger
What do I win?

 

[Second-Hand Boat Supplies]

This is extremely funny because it means that NYT is paying literally no one to run their mega-viral game purchase that brings millions to the site daily. They're just letting it run with the existing random word function in place. If there was a person paid to take literally 30 seconds a day to look at what the word will be, they would have pulled a different one.

 

[xQc]

I play wordle with my mom every morning through text. All she said was "must be that roe v wade stuff going on". This whole thing seems like a psyop. But if your complaining online about this your actually a child.

 

[Megaton Punch]

This is extremely funny because it means that NYT is paying literally no one to run their mega-viral game purchase that brings millions to the site daily. They're just letting it run with the existing random word function in place. If there was a person paid to take literally 30 seconds a day to look at what the word will be, they would have pulled a different one.

I mean, did you expect anything else? It's the laziest, minimally upkept concept for a game possible. It was clearly designed around maximum ROI, where the investment is giving Kerpal Aichwanbee five dollars to write a function that picks a number between 1 and sizeof() - 1 and returns whatever exists at that index in fiveLetterWords[]. Then they just run that function once per day and presto, instant riches.

The idea is fun enough, but the fact that they put so little effort into it really shows how little they respect the players.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

So many people tell me to play this game but it just looks like shitty Bethesda Fallout hacking to me.

 

[veri]

tomorrow’s word: COCKS

 

[Papa Pizzaria]

At New York Times Games, we take our role seriously as a place to entertain and escape

They're so open about bread and circus these days.

 

[El Goblina]

This is a game where SLAVE is not considered a word. It cannot be guessed. If you think the NYT hasn't made the game political, you haven't been paying attention.

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

This is a game where SLAVE is not considered a word. It cannot be guessed. If you think the NYT hasn't made the game political, you haven't been paying attention.

See I didn't even know this and I already sensed this weird game was some kind of op. Who can explain it/who can tell you why/fools give you reasons/wise men never try.