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In case there's a paywall for the editor's note: the tl;dr is that today's word was originally supposed to be "FETUS". Last week the NYT noticed this and made a
by danso 4y ago
In case there's a paywall for the editor's note: the tl;dr is that today's word was originally supposed to be "FETUS". Last week the NYT noticed this and made a change, but this change wouldn't propagate to all the Wordle players who still have the cached word list in their browsers.
Full text below:
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Today, for example, some users may see an outdated answer that seems closely connected to a major recent news event.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 But we know that some people won’t do that and, as a result, will be asked to solve the outdated puzzle.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.
- WesolyKubeczek 4y agoI’m a bit puzzled on why do such a thing at all, but okay.
- danso 4y agoBecause the U.S. abortion debate is currently a huge news story and the NYT doesn't want Wordle to be seen as entwined in current events.
- Handytinge 4y agoThanks. I don't follow US non tech news and was genuinely puzzled about this.
- TheRealPomax 4y agoSame reason you might want to avoid "rifle" the day after a mass school shooting. The US is in the midst of an "abortion law" crisis (undoing abortion and birth control rights in order put women "back in their place", rolling back half a century of progress), and now is not the time for the word they replaced.
- slowmovintarget 4y agoThat's a gross mischaracterization of what's going on. The fact is the web of tissue-thin Supreme Court decisions never should have taken the place of a law. Congress needs to get off its collective tukus and pass a law; their job as the Legislative Branch. That they haven't done so is because they want this to be a wedge issue that drives people to go vote. The tenuous nature of privacy precedent was too useful as a political tool to be fixed. Regardless, I do wish we'd grow thicker skins so that we don't waste time wringing our hands about ordinary words in puzzle games causing emotional trauma.
- TheRealPomax 4y agoWhile you stick to ideals and advocate for how things should work, the reality of how things actually work is that many states as well as the federal government, independently but concerted, are setting back society for women in the US by several decades. So perhaps thicker skin can also include "not minding when someone or some company does something like this, because they understand that sometimes, words matter".
- nimbleal 4y agoThat’s about as fair as a characterisation of that debate as saying “people want to keep R vs. W because they love killing babies”. The simple difference between the sides is one thinks whatever it is that’s in the womb is a human life, the other does not. Both sides’ believe their positions are essentially rooted in compassion — one for the adult, one for (according to their understanding) the child.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
- ISL 4y ago"current Wordle technology" is one of the things that made it so great -- it was /is client-side. I understand that NYT didn't want to step in it, and it was probably a smart decision, but I'd love to live in a world where the editor chose to say, "Well, we defined that word list many months ago and it happened to come up today. The public reaction to today's Wordle simply emphasizes the fact that words, even a single word, matter."
- slowmovintarget 4y agoThe "we" wouldn't be The New York Times, though. The "we" was Wardle's girlfriend.
- jaywalk 4y agoThis word, in this context, should not matter. It is essentially a random word, inserted far in advance, that happens to relate to current events. The fact that it matters to anyone here is a symptom of the severe societal illness that publications like the NYT are helping to spread. How long until dictionaries and textbooks are forced to change the definition of "fetus" because it makes some people uncomfortable to admit that a human embryo becomes a fetus at nine weeks of development?
- djur 4y agoThis has nothing to do with the definition of the word and everything to do with NYT not wanting to be perceived as injecting political commentary into a politically neutral product.
- jaywalk 4y agoI understand that, and agree with putting out an editor's note about it. I just think that the second sentence in the example editor's note provided should not be necessary, and the simple explanation of what happened should be sufficient.