The New York Times announced today it swapped out the word “fetus” in its pre-loaded Wordle answer list to keep the game unassociated with last week’s leaked Roe v. Wade draft court opinion, though it still might be today’s answer for some players who haven’t refreshed their browsers.
The word was part of Wordle’s original answer list adopted when the Times bought the game from creator Josh Wardle earlier this year. While the swap was made last week for a more generic answer, it didn’t update for every player due to how browser caching works.
The Times says it “wants Wordle to remain distinct from the news.” It’s not the first time the word list has been changed, as various offensive and obscure words were cut when the outlet took over in the first place. It wouldn’t be surprising to see other words tied to hot-button topics cut from the answer list in the future.
The Times is revamping the backend tech of Wordle to help prevent this in the future. That’s also, no doubt, part of the plan to monetize and make back some of the obscene amount of money spent on the project in the first place.
Written by Ben Barrett on behalf of GLHF.
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