Fans of the popular game Wordle were confused Tuesday when it appeared there were two different correct answers to the day’s puzzle.
Brooklyn-based software engineer Josh Wardle created the game for his partner and after it became a hit with his family’s WhatsApp group, he released Wordle to the public in October. By late December, more than 300,000 played in one day and by the end of January, The New York Times had purchased the game for seven figures.
Players are given the option to share an image of their finished puzzles – which feature gray, yellow and green squares with no words – on social media. Twitter users are probably familiar with the posts, as well as parody versions.
New puzzles are posted daily at midnight and players can find them on the original Wordle site, powerlanguage.co.uk, and now through The New York Times. Users would bond over shared struggles or gloat over success as they all tried to guess the same word.
However, soon after the clock struck midnight after Valentine’s Day evening, players discovered that the game had changed. Not everyone was guessing for the same word when it came to puzzle 241.
According to Mashable (which offers word spoilers for the puzzle), the entire answer list, in order, is visible in the Wordle site code. When the game became available through The New York Times, some possible answers were removed, including the word slated for Feb. 15.
So, while the Wordle site carried the original solution, the The New York Times version had a similarly spelled, but different, answer.
Australian journalist Michael Slezak claims that The New York Times told him in an email that it will update that word list over time to “keep the puzzle accessible.” Mashable also reached out to the outlet for information about the two solutions.
As of 1:12 p.m. EST Tuesday, the powerlanguage.co.uk address linked to the New York Times Wordle site.
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