Inside Tuesday's Wordle scandal

Russia might invade Ukraine, inflation is soaring, and COVID is still unfortunately a thing, yet the issue on many Americans' minds is, of course, today's Wordle.

Wordle, if you have been living under a rock, is a daily, online word game in which players have six tries to guess a five-letter word. The answer is always the same for everyone — that is, until Tuesday, when users were deeply, deeply betrayed.

You see, The New York Times recently acquired Wordle, which up until that point had been hosted on its own website for free. Once the dreaded acquisition was complete, the game migrated over to the Times' site, where it will remain accessible, and in front of a paywall (phew). Apparently, however, the old site has still been active and playable ... meaning there were two different Wordle answers on Tuesday: one on the original Wordle site, and one on the Times' page.

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Naturally, chaos ensued.

But what happened?

According to The Verge, the Times has removed possible guesses and solutions so users can't play or solve the puzzle with words like "whore," "wench," or "lynch." And on Tuesday, apparently in a bid to keep the game "accessible to more people," the publication skipped the original solution for puzzle #241 (which was "agora") and moved to the solution for the next day's #242 (which we will not reveal). The Times previously denied making any changes to the game, per Forbes.

If you're still playing the original version of Wordle hosted at powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle — meaning maybe you've downloaded the game, or haven't refreshed your browser since loading the original URL, notes the Verge — your Wordle will now be forever out of sync with everyone else's. And where's the fun in that?

Guess it's time to reload!