Today, we look at how the New York Times has gone “off book” again and chosen a Wordle answer not on the original Wordle answer list.
Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of pop culture history that interests me that doesn’t quite fit into the other features.
SPOILERS FOR THE JUNE 9, 2023 WORDLE!
As I’ve noted in the past, the New York Times has a specific editor for Wordle whose job it is to pick the words that would be used as answers each day. In general, this just meant that the editor would mix up the order of the answers from the pre-arranged (when the game was first released) list of future answers, choosing words that she felt would work better next to each other (you know, avoiding the same type of word two days in a row).
Well, back in March, the Times ADDED a word that wasn’t on the original answer list for the first time. And today, they did it again.
Today’s word, BALSA, was not on the original list of answers. So the Times continues to mess with expectations for players a bit. It’s obviously not a big deal, either way, but it’s interesting, especially for the statistically inclined like my buddy, Chris, who let me know about this one. Chris noted the first time this happened, and I assume he continues to believe, “this displeases me and anyone who likes to use coding/statistics/information theory to play with wordle, because your stats depend on knowing the list of possible answers. And it appears we don’t anymore.”
Thanks to my pal, Chris, for suggesting this last night, and thanks to reader, Matt, for noting it, as well. If anyone has any pop culture bit that you’d like me to discuss, drop me a line at brian@popculturereferences.com.
As with soo many things I guess the issue is what the purpose of the game is. I don’t know about anyone else, but the idea that there is a list of possible words you could read just seems like cheating to me. I know people like to game games, but to me, that’s what makes games fun is just going in with minimal information and seeing if you can solve the problem in the parameters given.
3/27: GUANO
4/9: SNAFU
6/9: BALSA
Three times now for using a word NOT on the list of 2305.
At some point don’t you think they’ll go to putting all the words back in the “hopper” and starting over? But this time replace the word back in the hopper after each daily use. ALSO, keep it random with no daily judgment.