Faking it in five letters

Launched in October 2021, it united the online world in an incredibly difficult time, using just a few rows of recognisable squares. Then the New York Times (NYT) acquired Wordle in January, and two things happened.

Outraged players took to Twitter (where most fans cheerfully shared their results through lockdowns and hard pandemic months), insisting that the daily guess-thefive-letter-word-in-six-tries puzzle has become harder to crack, and to complain that more of their community is cheating.

A study by Wordfinderx, an online wordsearch tool, suggests that the latter claim might be true. The platform analysed Google Trends data over three months (ending February 20, 2022) and found that searches for “today’s Wordle” rose by 196%.

In December, “search interest for… ‘today’s wordle’ on Google was so low it registered a ‘0’ for search popularity, but by February 14, searches for Wordle answers reached peak popularity,” states the report published on Wordfinderx.com. The number of searches was highest, the study found, on February 15 and February 19. The words for those days were Aroma and Swill.

It’s yet another twist in the tale of Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle, 38, who created the game for his word-puzzle-loving partner Palak Shah, saw it go viral, and then handed it over to NYT for a sum “in the low seven figures” (or, at least $1 million).

NYT insists they haven’t changed a thing. “The Times has not made the puzzle harder. We have not added any words to the solutions list, which was already predetermined by the game’s original creator,” NYT communications director Jordan Cohen told People magazine in February.

As for cheating, there were always plenty of ways to game the system. Avid Wordler Amitha B admits to using Google once. “Another time, I failed in all six attempts, so I went to another device and got it right at the start,” she laughs. Hacks online reveal the best first words to try, and the best steps to take after. On platforms such as Wordfinderx, users can type in the letters they know and let an algorithm do the guessing.

For fans, perhaps even more annoying than the cheats are the spoilers. GitHub software engineer Robert Reichel did some digging and found that the puzzles’ solutions were embedded in the source code; he cracked this code in early January. A Medium entry by graphic designer Owen Yin lists likely solutions all the way from the first Wordle to what is currently the last one, dated October 20, 2027.

Meanwhile, NYT has been curating the list too, removing terms such as (spoiler alert) whore, wench and slave. What next? For fans of the game, it’s safest not to ask.