Wordle is still played the way it always has been, and if you just want a simple game without a lot of thought to it, that’s all you need to know. But things are changing behind the scenes, and that includes the way solutions are chosen.
Originally, each day the answer came from a list of 2000+ words embedded in the site’s JavaScript code, (If you wanted, you could just go to the page source and see it.) The list avoided words that were too vague or that were simple plurals of four-letter words, and time With I found whether or not a word I was considering is “wordal-ish” enough to solve for the day. Sometimes, before entering my guess, I check against this no-spoiler list: All Wordle are words, but not in order. I can Ctrl-F to say “minimize” to see if that’s a possible solution.
When The New York Times bought the game earlier this year, the first thing they did was keep the old word list. (All complaints about the game being “difficult” were imagined by the NYT; they actually did the opposite, removing the word AGORA from the word list because they felt it was a bit too vague.)
But that is changing. Now there’s an editor for Wordle, Tracy Bennett, and the editor has the power to choose the solution. That means you’ll have to hone your solving Spidey sense of “is this the kind of word I’d find on the wordlist?” “Would Tracy Bennett choose a kind word for today?”
For Thanksgiving, she chose Fest. Drive the day before Thanksgiving. You can either think these are cute and clever choices, or you get mad that the purity of the game is being ruined. I don’t agree with the author who said this The editor is “ruining” Wordlebut I understand.
g/o media can get commission
If you play the New York Times crossword, you know that playfulness is part of the philosophy; I’m not at all surprised that these little winks are making their way onto Wordle alternatives. By deliberately choosing words each day, the NYT is also giving itself the ability to avoid words it thinks might be inappropriate, such as when FETUS popped up. Roe v. Wade opinion leak,
Ultimately, this means that you may want to take weather and newness into account when choosing your opening word or considering a possible answer. The feast may seem a bit heavy handed, but what if it happens to be a message, loud and clear, that times have changed?