The NYT Has Now Officially Changed The Wordle Solution List

The New York Times’ acquisition of Wordle has already stirred up a few controversies, from players’ streaks being wiped to removing offensive words from the valid word list. Today we have confirmation that it’s not just the valid word list that the NYT has changed–it’s the solutions as well.

Wordle 241, which is the puzzle for February 15th, has a different answer depending on whether you’re playing on the live NYT site, or on a downloaded or cached version of the original powerlanguage.co.uk site. The NYT hasn’t fully changed the solution list, it’s just removed a few select answers, which means players who are sticking to the original version of Wordle will now be one day behind everyone else’s solutions.

The following will contain spoilers for the original, cached version of Wordle:

The word that was intended for Wordle 241 was “AGORA,” a word originating from Ancient Greek that refers to a city’s central public space. That word has been removed from the NYT version of the game, and instead the original solution for Wordle 242 has been moved up a day. Contrary to claims that the publication would make Wordle harder, the NYT has said in a statement that it has chosen to remove obscure words from the answer list, as well as “insensitive or offensive” words.

“AGORA” was removed from the solution list due to its obscurity, along with future solutions “PUPAL” and the British-spelled “FIBRE.” The NYT has also removed future answers “SLAVE,” “LYNCH,” and “WENCH” under its “insensitive or offensive” rule.

For players who continue to use the original version of Wordle, whether by having a browser tab open to the original site, or by having the webpage downloaded, the diverging solution list constitutes a problem.

Part of the appeal of Wordle has been that everyone around the world shares the same daily answer. The social appeal of the game starts to wane when people have different solutions to the same puzzles, which can lead to arguments and accusations of cheating, as NBA star Karl-Anthony Towns recently found out.

For what its worth, those with the old word list can update quite easily if they choose to do so. The word list will update automatically if players refresh their browser window, or they can move to a live version of the site rather than a downloaded one. This solution isn’t all that useful to those who are making the choice to play the pre-NYT version of the game, however.

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