No, The New York Instances didn’t make Wordle more durable

Wordle — the viral every day phrase guessing recreation that was just lately purchased by The New York Instances — has been on a tear up to now few days. Brainteasers like “ULTRA,” “ULCER,” and “ALOFT” have appeared, irritating gamers, lots of whom have taken to Twitter to complain that the sport’s new homeowners are deliberately amping up the issue.

However whereas conspiracy theories abound that the rash of adverse phrases is a results of the New York Instances Video games division sitting round with devilish grins, trying to discover probably the most troublesome five-letter phrases within the lexicon, the reality is that The New York Instances is harmless of Wordle crimes right here.

That’s as a result of Wordle’s options don’t embody each five-letter phrase within the English lexicon. As the sport’s creator, Josh Wardle, defined in a New York Instances interview (earlier than the sport was acquired), he had his associate, Palak Shah — for whom the sport was initially created as a present — assist whittle down the 12,000 or so potentialities to round 2,500 phrases that she was acquainted with.

It’s that glossary that constitutes Wordle’s answer set, and the listing is actually baked into the Javascript of the web site itself. It’s one of many causes the sport was really easy to avoid wasting domestically earlier than the NYT buy.

And as a fast comparability between the pre-NYT listing of options (which could be considered right here, with a HEAVY spoiler warning) and the listing of still-viewable options on the NYT model of Wordle (you may comply with PCMag’s directions right here to view the Javascript listing), the sport’s new homeowners haven’t modified a single answer — but, anyway. The principle change that the Instances made was to take away some phrases from the listing of legitimate guesses for the sport (particularly, offensive language and slurs), however that doesn’t influence the answer listing.

The reality is that Wordle has all the time had troublesome phrases. TAPIR and REBUS have earlier solutions, as have PROXY, KNOLL, QUERY, and SIEGE.

Since The New York Instances purchased Wordle, these have been the options:

• THOSE
• MOIST
• SHARD
• PLEAT
• ALOFT
• SKILL
• ELDER
• FRAME
• HUMOR
• PAUSE
• ULCER
• ULTRA
• ROBIN

A few of these phrases are certainly trickier ones, however there have been loads of pleasant phrases within the combine, too, like THOSE, FRAME, and SHARD. And whereas the current streak of robust phrases is certainly a factor (together with at the moment’s puzzle, which, I’ll admit, took me all six guesses to resolve), it’s not as a result of The New York Instances is ruining the sport.