First of all, stop complaining. Wordle is no more difficult than it was a week ago, before The New York Times bought it, updated the logo and colors, and put millions of Wordle fans on alert. If anything, it got easier.
I know, five letter words like Cynic are not easy. They repeat letters, they only use one vowel (Y is an unofficial member of the vowel family), and we don't use them often. People complained that perhaps the New York Times scribes were upping the ante. Not at all, the Old Gray Lady promised. These words were already in the system.
What The Times has done this week, however, is simplify and perhaps purify the Wordle system.
A few weeks ago I wrote about Wordle's charming scam, Lewdle. It was composed only of offensive words. A stupid and basically harmless effort. In a statement about the recent changes at Wordle, a New York Times spokesperson told Fox4News in Dallas, TX:
"We update the word list over time to remove obscure words to keep the puzzle accessible to more people, as well as insensitive or offensive words."
It's hard to imagine a less offensive game than Wordle. In fact, the entire creation, from the design to the simple gameplay (a 5-by-6 grid, with six chances to guess the word based on in-game visual feedback) and the lack of in-game competition seems like a minimum of sweetness. . It's like imagining the game's creator, Josh Wardle, building the game basically out of love for his partner and as a way to stay connected during the pandemic.
Stupefy
I understand. No one wants to work for a few minutes or more on a good word game only to find out that they are building the five letters for, say, a collection of a human body part. I tried to reach out to Wardle on Twitter to find out if he ever put "offensive" words on the list, and I'll update if he responds.
In truth, though, I'm more concerned about The New York Times's other effort: removing obscure words.
Original Wordle players will remember that the game's first web address was a UK URL. This is because Wardle is from Wales.
Over the last month or so, I've noticed more than a few English-centric words in Wordle's results, including Shire, Abbey, and Shard. If he's never been to the UK, talked to someone there, read a book about the UK, or watched a single Harlan Coben crime drama on Netflix, these words might confuse you.
I've watched a lot of British crime dramas and recently started working with a great British crew. I tend to know my Anglo-Saxon terms.
The New York Times, however, strangely focuses on the accessibility of this already basic game. It's only five fucking letters. Should the New York Times crossword puzzle be more accessible?
It never occurred to me that the editors of one of America's oldest and most reputable newspapers would seek to make the dumbest game, to make Wordle as simple as possible.
The beauty of Wordle is that it not only challenges your knowledge of five-letter words, but also pushes you to research and learn new words. When confused, don't most of us go to Google to try different combinations of letters to find the unknown word? Or is it just me? Either way, this game is a vocabulary builder, unless of course you cut out the obscure words.
There's a five-letter word for what The New York Times does, and it probably doesn't fit Wordle anymore.