How this Wordle answer glitch drove fans nuts

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Fans of the daily hidden word game “Wordle” woke up Monday to a social media uproar. The New York Times, which owns and operates the game, had made a last-minute change to the Wordle answer in order eliminate the word “fetus,” presumably in deference to sensitivities swirling around a leaked Supreme Court opinion on abortion.

Whatever the motive, the execution was botched and a diversion so popular for its simplicity and innocence lost a little bit of its joy.

Wordle players try to identify a five-letter word within six guesses. Green squares indicate which letters in each guess exactly match letters in the answer word, and yellow indicates correct letters in incorrect positions.

The beauty of the game is that it’s easy and social. Players share their solving patterns and statistics on social media, trying to best their friends.

The botched answer swap spoiled the fun. Software quirks gave some players the original answer word, “fetus,” instead of the substitute, “shine.” And if different people face different answer words, the social competition collapses.

I often start my daily Wordle with the word “spine.” That gave me bragging rights on Monday because it yielded four green squares on my first guess.

If, instead, I had faced the original answer word, “fetus,” my starting word would have been close to a whiff, and it would have taken me many more guesses to solve the puzzle.

But since some people faced one answer word and others faced another, the joy of boasting (and schadenfreude) from social sharing was greatly diminished.

Then there’s the politics. It’s not exactly obvious that a game about word structure and letter patterns would exclude words based on whatever’s in the news, especially since Wordle has famously avoided