Today, we look at the absurdity of LORIS being a Wordle answer.
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.
As you all know, Wordle has been a very popular online word game that launched in October 2021, and then was purchased by the New York Times in January 2022. Tracy Bennett became the Wordle editor, as the original Wordle had a specific list of words set to run, and now Bennett picks the words herself based on, in effect, vibes (I mean no criticism to her for that, as that’s a completely reasonable way to pick words for a game like this. You know, like “It feels like we’ve had too many words like this, so let’s try THIS word,” etc.).
She has done a fine job, but as you can imagine, with a game running this long, they’re starting to run out of five-letter words. Bennett’s answer to the reduction in possible words, though, has been increasingly looking to super-obscure words, like Friday’s answer, which was LORIS, a little-known forest animal…
There are obviously plenty of more reasonable words left. Bennett should really just try to stick to words that your average gameplayer has ever heard of.
Notice the Google trends for “LORIS”…
It goes right from “No one ever thought about this word ever” to “Holy shit, what is this word?”
That’s not how a game like Wordle should ever go. Words like NERVY are annoying, as well, but at least most people have at least kind of sort of heard of that word. UNDID, MODAL, there have been some sketchy ones recently, but nothing comes close to LORIS.
Please, Ms. Bennett, just be cool.
