Wordle Answer Pulled Due To Relevance To “Major Recent News Event”

The New York Times pulled a Wordle answer for today, May 9, due to its relevance to a “major recent news event.” Like all Wordle answers, the word was pre-programmed into the game months in advance, but due to a fluke of timing it could be interpreted as insensitive.

“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,” reads a New York Times blog post. “Today, for example, some users may see an outdated answer that seems closely connected to a major recent news event.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.”

The blog post did not detailed the changed word, but it had been “fetus.” The word is newly relevant and possibly sensitive due to last week’s news that the Supreme Court is preparing to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that guaranteed a Constitutional right to abortion.

NYT Games says that it changed the word because it wants to be “a place to entertain and escape, and we want Wordle to remain distinct from the news.” It says it discovered the word list last week and changed it for as many users as possible. If you refreshed your browser anytime since NYT made the change, you got an updated word. But if you haven’t refreshed lately, you received the old puzzle.

In light of the news, some game developers have stepped forward in defense of reproductive rights. Bungie published a blog post expressing support for Roe v. Wade, and subsequently defended its remarks on social media. If you’d like to assist in the fight for reproductive rights, GameSpot has compiled a list of organizations that need support.