Jerky Twitter bot spoils next day’s Wordle solutions

polygon.com:

Some jerk has created a new bot that responds to people’s Wordle tweets — you know, the post-game, shareable stack of squares that shows your guessing progression — with a spoiler for the next day’s word. The bot, called “The Wordlinator,” not only responds to people’s tweets with spoilers, but also says weirdly aggressive shit like “get on with your life,” “stop bragging,” and “this doesn’t make you look smart.” Very sharp stuff.

It’s a great bot for people who hate the idea of others having harmless fun. Luckily, it is very easy to prevent spoilers by blocking the bot account — even if the bot frequently tweets, “I’ll be back every day.” Here’s the account, along with a warning for spoilers for the next day’s word.

How is the next day’s word even obtainable? Software engineer Robert Reichel discovered how to figure out the next day’s Wordle words, NME initially reported. In his blog, published early January, Reichel explains how to “pick apart the source code” to “reverse engineer the algorithm” in order to get the right answer. He then details the process for how to similarly reverse engineer what the next day’s Wordle solution is. It seems some disgruntled Wordle-hater has used those skills for evil.

Wordle is a chill game that took took off early this year; players have six chances to guess a 5-letter word. Over the course of guessing, letters in attempted words turn yellow, green, or gray. Yellow signifies the letter is in the word but in the wrong placement, green means the letter is in the correct spot, and gray means neither is true, though that still makes it useful for process-of-elimination. After solving the day’s puzzle, you can choose to share your results — which the game makes into an easily copy-pasted