The New York Times edits Wordle answer list after Roe v. Wade leak

techcrunch.com:

Perhaps you played the Wordle this morning and encountered a pretty ordinary five-letter word. But if you haven’t refreshed your page over the last week, you could’ve encountered the solution “FETUS,” which the New York Times decided was a bit too closely linked to current events — last week, Politico leaked a Supreme Court opinion draft that is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, reversing the constitutional right to an abortion.

The New York Times changed today’s solution to a word that’s less politically charged, though the original solution might still appear for users who haven’t reloaded the game.

“Some users may see an outdated answer that seems closely connected to a major recent news event. This is entirely unintentional and a coincidence,” wrote New York Times Games editorial director Everdeen Mason in a statement, published right as today’s Wordle hit the web.

As Mason explains, Wordle’s answers are predetermined in its code, pulling from an answer pool of five-letter words that founder Josh Wardle concocted over a year ago. Not all five-letter words appear in the list — he intentionally removed the most obscure five-letter words, since he wanted the game to be solvable more often than not (you also probably won’t encounter a four-letter noun with an added “S” at the end to make it plural).

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 9, 2022

“When we acquired Wordle in January, it had been built for a relatively small group of users,” Mason said. “We’re now busy revamping Wordle’s