MOTIF EDITS AWFUL; SLATE WANTS CHAOS (X/6)

December 1, 2022 8:30 AM

Wordle gets more intentional, but the new Wordle editor is ruining Wordle.
posted by Etrigan (57 comments total)

I almost threw my computer across the room when Thanksgiving's answer was FEAST.
posted by General Malaise at 8:38 AM on December 1, 2022 [49 favorites]

I hadn’t realized wordle had gotten an editor but almost lost my streak last week because I was like “there’s no way it can be FEAST on thanksgiving, that’d be dumb as hell”
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:39 AM on December 1, 2022 [14 favorites]

I hope that they do JOLLY on Xmas and HEART on Valentine's Day. IRISH on St. Pat's.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:41 AM on December 1, 2022 [7 favorites]

Yes!! I was so mad. Everyone knows Thanksgiving is one of the funniest days for some kind of super inappropriate word. Hoping for ABORT or FUCKS on Christmas to make up for it, please and thank you new editor
posted by potrzebie at 8:43 AM on December 1, 2022 [11 favorites]

Lizzie O'Leary, the author of the Slate piece, doesn't know what a pun is. Using the word MEDAL on Veterans Day is not a pun.
posted by Jasper Fnorde at 8:46 AM on December 1, 2022 [18 favorites]

As long as we're complaining about things, that Axios house style is kind of annoying. (ten-second read)

Why it's stupid:

➤ It makes your readers think that you think they're an idiot.

posted by box at 8:48 AM on December 1, 2022 [26 favorites]

I am just here to applaud the title of this post, and also to complain about FEAST.
posted by pemberkins at 8:56 AM on December 1, 2022 [14 favorites]

Why do people think they have to prove that they're doing something? Great, you're the Wordle editor. Now leave it alone!

(Some problem happens with technology acquisition programs)
posted by Galvanic at 9:01 AM on December 1, 2022 [5 favorites]

I was partially annoyed and partially pleased last year when Heardle had Earth Wind & Fire's "September" for the song on 9/21. It's also the birthday of a close family member and some friends, so I always remembah. I think heardle's also done a few other intentional clues, but my main beef is that since Spotify bought it, they've skewed more toward some pop songs of the last few years, which has really killed my once near-flawless record.
posted by onehalfjunco at 9:07 AM on December 1, 2022

The interviews I have read with the Spelling Bee editor annoy me as a daily Spelling Bee player. Definitely an inability to leave well enough alone.
posted by MattD at 9:07 AM on December 1, 2022 [5 favorites]

I'd prefer an editor go out of their way to make it NOT topical. JOLLY on Thanksgiving, IRISH on Christmas,
posted by Gorgik at 9:10 AM on December 1, 2022 [7 favorites]

Oops. BUNNY on Veteran's day.
posted by Gorgik at 9:10 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

Oh right, WORDLE! It was about this time last year that it blew up, right? I gave up on it after I killed my run by forgetting to play on the day it was LAPSE. Felt like the universe was telling me something.
posted by St. Oops at 9:15 AM on December 1, 2022 [12 favorites]

The only reason I can think of for this game to have an editor is that the original word list included "ILIAC" but not "ILIUM". Other than that, she should leave it alone and let the randomness be.
posted by morspin at 9:17 AM on December 1, 2022 [5 favorites]

I KNEW IT!

And I hate it.


So much.
posted by TheCoug at 9:19 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

The only job of the editor should be to look at the random word generated and change it if, by some freak accident, it came up FEAST or THANK for Thanksgiving Day.
posted by straight at 9:32 AM on December 1, 2022 [17 favorites]

I still play the cache.
posted by a complicated history at 9:43 AM on December 1, 2022 [9 favorites]

chris twhat anass hole!
posted by chavenet at 9:44 AM on December 1, 2022 [15 favorites]

Is there something special about the NYT branded wordle that prevents people from switching to any of the clones that don't have this problem? (or the cached version of the original that a complicated history mentions)
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 9:46 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

This is good fodder: fifty years from now, someone will write an article about this era of Wordle.
posted by aniola at 9:49 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

Aw, I thought FEAST was cute.
posted by obfuscation at 9:56 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

This is good fodder: fifty years from now, someone will write an article about this era of Wordle.

Article? It'll be an entire English Lit PhD thesis.
posted by fairmettle at 9:57 AM on December 1, 2022

Hard agree that this is terrible- and it made me more suspicious that giving us FETUS on the day the Dobbs draft was leaked wasn’t a FLUKE.
posted by Mchelly at 9:58 AM on December 1, 2022

WORDSCAPES 4 LYFE
posted by slogger at 10:00 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

I almost threw my computer across the room when Thanksgiving's answer was FEAST.

Same! I was, like, "Nahhhh. It couldn't possibly be FEAST. Not on turkey day. That's just wrong."
posted by Thorzdad at 10:02 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

The only job of the editor should be to look at the random word generated and change it if, by some freak accident, it came up FEAST or THANK for Thanksgiving Day.
posted by straight at 5:32 PM on December 1 [+] [!]

This reminds me of a line by Donella Meadows, in her 1999 essay "Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System":

The systems analysis community has a lot of lore about leverage points. Those of us who were trained by the great Jay Forrester at MIT have all absorbed one of his favorite stories. “People know intuitively where leverage points are,” he says. “Time after time I’ve done an analysis of a company, and I’ve figured out a leverage point — in inventory policy, maybe, or in the relationship between sales force and productive force, or in personnel policy. Then I’ve gone to the company and discovered that there’s already a lot of attention to that point. Everyone is trying very hard to push it IN THE WRONG DIRECTION!”

posted by rollick at 10:06 AM on December 1, 2022 [5 favorites]

I personally appreciated LOSER on Father's Day but I'm probably in the minority there.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:17 AM on December 1, 2022 [10 favorites]

I just reviewed the HOW TO PLAY rules of Wordle. "Outsmart the arrogant editor" was not added to the ruleset. If NYT is determined to screw with this game, they should at least own up to it in the rules.
posted by SPrintF at 10:22 AM on December 1, 2022

STACY on Mother's Day.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:30 AM on December 1, 2022 [27 favorites]

THESE
JOKES
WRITE
THEMS
ELVES

posted by flabdablet at 10:32 AM on December 1, 2022 [26 favorites]

Stupid editor. The original wordle code and its words were chosen to slowly casting a powerful spell that would have put the stirring old ones back into their slumber. Now all hope is lost. They will awaken at midnight on the 31st of December.
posted by interogative mood at 10:37 AM on December 1, 2022 [8 favorites]

I am a surprised to hear that there is still a single universal word for wordle. My friend and I have been getting different words on the same day / puzzle number for several weeks now and we assumed it had moved to a more variable model.
posted by roolya_boolya at 10:52 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

That seems like very unexpected behavior! Are you in significantly different time zones?
posted by sagc at 10:53 AM on December 1, 2022

No, we live in the same city. And a couple of times I have gotten a word a few days after he has had it.
posted by roolya_boolya at 10:58 AM on December 1, 2022

Did Wordle just officially jump the SHARK?
posted by waving at 11:04 AM on December 1, 2022 [8 favorites]

From the Slate article: The ability to guess the Wordle based on context clues that would appeal to Andy Borowitz is soul-crushing. Or, at the very least, quite annoying.

Exactly. And devastating.
posted by carmicha at 11:05 AM on December 1, 2022 [5 favorites]

We're constantly manipulated by all manner of advertisers, companies, candidates, and the like.

It was nice believing that wordle was random, for a while anyway.
posted by wkearney99 at 11:10 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

roolya_boolya, my husband and I have this come up every now and again and apparently it's something to do with it drifting out of ync or something? I dunno. HOWEVER you can just reload and it gives whichever of you didn't have the official word a blank slate (but at least in my case it remembered my previous days and I got have a 1-guess day.
posted by joannemerriam at 11:28 AM on December 1, 2022

I don’t like the topical answers.

Then again, I don’t like any of the answers. I’m always like, “Seriously? PARER? Come on!”
posted by chrchr at 12:05 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

While I fall on the “Prefer Wordle stay random” side of the fence, my 18-year-old son clued in that there may be a Thanksgiving themed word last Thursday and got his first Wordle in 1 (a feat that has eluded me thus far) so that was pretty cool.
posted by The Gooch at 12:15 PM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

BEANS

That’s it. That’s my comment. You’re welcome.
posted by sacrifix at 12:25 PM on December 1, 2022 [16 favorites]

If your Wordle doesn't match and you're using the NYT website, you need a force refresh (CTRL+F5) to redownload the word list that was cached. But maybe you don't want to do that!
posted by dobi at 12:26 PM on December 1, 2022

Wordle creator promises viral game will stay simple and ad free

See also “the check is in the mail”, “of course I’ll respect you in the morning”, etc.
posted by TedW at 12:36 PM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

BALLS
posted by Chuffy at 1:00 PM on December 1, 2022

MWRA - Make Wordle Random Again
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 1:01 PM on December 1, 2022

I sometimes choose a topical starting word, which is how I got it one on Thanksgiving. Even so, I would prefer the word to be random and not manipulated.
posted by terooot at 1:06 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

Not only do I not understand why the game needed an editor at all (except, I guess, to avoid potential controversy as mentioned in the first link), I don't understand why they decided to add arbitrary rules about pluralization:

From the NYT announcement about Wordle now having an editor: The answer list will consist of five-letter words that fit those criteria, with the exception of plural forms of three- or four-letter words that end in “ES” or “S.” That is, the answer will never be FOXES or SPOTS, but it might be GEESE or FUNGI. As the game is currently designed, FOXES or SPOTS can be used as a guess word to help narrow down the answer, but FOXES or SPOTS will not be the answer.

Why is this necessary? What purpose does it serve, other than to annoy and frustrate players?
posted by asnider at 1:16 PM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

Josh Wardle’s original answer list already excluded plurals formed by adding “s” or “es” (but did include “fungi”), so that‘s just a formalization of an existing practice, not a new rule.
posted by mbrubeck at 1:32 PM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

Before exam week for college students it was STUDY. Ugh.

The NYT really has no idea what made Wordle popular, and is *way* too pleased with themselves.
posted by leotrotsky at 1:41 PM on December 1, 2022 [7 favorites]

I kinda think the FETUS thing was WHY wordle got an editor.
posted by Gyre,Gimble,Wabe, Esq. at 2:54 PM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

Well, fine, mbrubeck, correct me with facts and take away my outrage. *humph*
posted by asnider at 3:17 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

There's something funny about the accepted words list. Several times I've done the analysis and gotten "good choice, there is only one remaining word", when I had then picked another (incorrect) word and received another "excellent, only one word remains".
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 3:24 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

I don't play Wordle to guess the punchline of a dad joke. If the pushback on this isn't effective, I will be forced to fall back to the archived version that I saved when the sale happened.
posted by restless_nomad at 5:07 PM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

Several times I've done the analysis and gotten "good choice, there is only one remaining word", when I had then picked another (incorrect) word and received another "excellent, only one word remains".

Wordle has two different lists:
Possible words can be answers. ("MOTIF", "AWFUL", "SLATE", "CHAOS)
Acceptable words are legal guesses but will never be answers (see above re regular plurals or verb tenses). ("EDITS", "WANTS")
All possible words are acceptable, but not all acceptable words are possible.

When the wordlebot says "There are X remaining words", it is referring only to possible words (yes, it thinks that you know the entirety of each list and which word is on which). I suspect your latter guess in this situation was an acceptable word, but not a possible one.
posted by Etrigan at 5:12 PM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

my partner at the time asked me, "What would be a good starting word?" I suggested MOIST. Next day, bang! Got my first 1. (I rarely play)
posted by shoesfullofdust at 6:32 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

I haven't done it because I still play Wordle Forever with the original answer list, but if the NYT Wordle variant still serves the full past/future answer list it would be interesting to see an analysis of the changes and when they were made. I saw an article with some of the first round of changes (SLAVE removed, AGORA removed, some UK spellings removed) and had mixed feelings. This latest is a disappointing but unsurprising lack of restraint.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 3:04 AM on December 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

Today’s Wordle appears to be how the new editor is finding the fit of their role.
posted by leotrotsky at 4:59 AM on December 2, 2022 [3 favorites]