ROE V. WORDLE?

New York Times Reveals It Scrambled to Replace Extremely Timely Wordle Solution Word

The Gray Lady’s puzzle team admits it tried to expunge the word in a bid to remain “distinct from the news.”

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT.

It’s the online game that grabbed the attention of the world, using a simple process of elimination to find a unique five-letter word every day. Except on Monday, when there were not one but two possible Wordle answers after The New York Times’ Games section took fright at the programmed word that is central to a certain bombshell report about the Supreme Court last week. The database of planned answers was uploaded by the game’s British inventor, Josh Wardle, before he sold Wordle to the NYT for a seven-figure sum in January, but any changes to it only register if you refresh your browser, which many Wordle players apparently never do. NYT Games chief Everdeen Mason explained in a note to readers that staff noticed last week that a word was coming up “connected to a major recent news event”—she does not say which word—and tried their best to fix it for as many “solvers” as possible. “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,” she explained.