Wordle fans took to social media on Tuesday to show their frustration and perplexity at the game’s latest development.
What’s the issue? Wordle, which The New York Times purchased in late January, was displaying two distinct answers to Tuesday’s word puzzle, Wordle 241. You might get one answer if you play Wordle on The New York Times platform. However, the solution can be different if you played it on the old platform.
However, the disparity appears to be merely transient. “We are updating the word list over time to remove obscure words to keep the puzzle accessible to more people, as well as insensitive or offensive words,” stated New York Times communications executive director Jordan Cohen in an email.
“Our priority is making sure people can carry their stats and streaks from the original site, and this is a migration that is happening over time as people play.”
Users will ultimately be automatically redirected to “the NYTimes.com URL,” Cohen wrote, “at which point everyone should be playing the same version, as long as they refresh their browsers.” On Wednesday, the New York Times official Wordplay Twitter account attempted to persuade anyone using the old Wordle version to hard refresh the page in order to be redirected to the New York Times version.
Was your Wordle answer (Wordle #241) AGORA yesterday? You could still be on the old Wordle site. Give your browser a refresh to be redirected to the NYT site and guess today’s word. pic.twitter.com/US82NuhJAV
— New York Times Games (@NYTGames) February 16, 2022
Wordle is a daily word game that may be found online. It’s simple, enjoyable, and, like a crossword puzzle, can only be completed once per day. Every 24 hours, a new word of the day is introduced, and it is up to you to figure out what it is. The game was acquired by The New York Times at the end of January for an undisclosed sum in the low seven figures after it went viral.
The disparity in responses on Tuesday’s Wordle underlines the issues – or opportunities – that arise when a small online game becomes viral and is acquired by a media behemoth. The route to bringing Wordle on the Times platform has been a difficult one for Wordle fans. Some gamers discovered their game statistics were reset when the game began diverting to a Times page in early February. Then gamers claimed that the game had become more difficult to play since the acquisition, to which the Times responded that nothing had changed about the game play.
