New York Times’ new WordleBot tool will sharpen your Wordle skills

By Jesse Lennox July 12, 2022

New York Times has introduced WorldeBot, a companion tool that will analyze your performance in Wordle.

Want to know why you played so well — or so badly — in Wordle 388? Meet WordleBot, your daily wordle companion that will tell you how efficient and lucky you were — and it could help improve your results. https://t.co/uI9c3c2RFn pic.twitter.com/sLd64zWfMV

— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 12, 2022

Wordle became a phenomenon late last year as a simple yet addictive puzzle game in which players would attempt to guess a five-letter word based on clues dictated by colored squares. Green squares mean the letter guessed is the correct letter and in the correct space, yellow means that letter is in the word but not in that space, and grey means that letter doesn’t exist in the key word. Originally made by a single person, New York Times would go on to purchase the game and host it on their site.

WorldeBot claims to help players become better Wordle players by showing them statistics after completing a daily puzzle. It will give you scores from 0 to 99 based on luck and skill for each guess, and then give advice on how you could improve in future games. You can see WordleBot’s advice by taking your completed puzzle to the WorldeBot site where it will automatically run through your guesses and make suggestions.

Along with WordleBot, New York Times will also now allow players to link their Wordle stats to their accounts so they cannot be lost.

There was some concern that Wordle would lose its appeal after being purchased by the New York Times, especially since it spawned dozens of other imitators looking to capture the same audience, however, the game is still played by thousands every day. WordleBot could be a fun way to help people learn new strategies and words for their daily brain teaser.

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Jesse Lennox loves writing, games, and complaining about not having time to write and play games. He knows the names of more…

Gaming

Wordle is getting its own board game adaptation from Hasbro

A player plays the Wordle board game.

Hasbro has announced it is collaborating with The New York Times to create a Wordle: The Party Game, the board game adaptation of the uber-popular mobile word game. The gameplay is the same, but it's being brought to players "in an all new way that's perfect for game night with family and friends," according to a press release.

In this version of Wordle, one player is designated as the Wordle Host in each round and writes down the secret five-letter word. The other players have to compete against each other to guess the word in six tries or less, with the winner being the player that scores the fewest points by the end of the game.

Gaming

Today’s Wordle answer changed due to Roe v. Wade

A person plays 'Wordle' on an iPhone.

There are some days when Wordle players get different answers depending on the browser they're using to play the game. Today happens to be one of those days, but for a vastly different reason. The New York Times revised today's Wordle answer because of its unintentional connection to the Supreme Court's impending ruling on Roe v. Wade.

The original answer to Wordle 324 was supposed to be "fetus." Wordle founder Josh Wardle scheduled that solution to show up today over a year ago, long before The New York Times bought the game at the height of its popularity in January. Everdeen Mason, editorial director for New York Times Games, said in a statement that it changed the answer to something entirely different because of its proximity to the Supreme Court's draft opinion that leaked last week and contained a proposal to overturn the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade abortion ruling, which sent shock waves across the country.

Gaming

The New York Times has already changed Wordle solutions

A person plays 'Wordle' on an iPhone.

The New York Times is interfering with the possible guesses and answers for Wordle. The new version of the popular word-based puzzle has deviated from the original, which means that some players might not get the same solutions to Wordle puzzles as everyone else anymore.
On January 31, Wordle was acquired by the Times to bolster the news publication's casual gaming offerings. While Wordle isn't gated behind a paywall like many feared just yet, the Times is making gameplay changes despite promising it wouldn't.
The Times' version of Wordle doesn't allow certain problematic words -- which BoingBoing details -- to be used as guesses or solutions anymore. That's understandable, but it has also removed some ordinary words like "fibre" and "pupal" just because they are obscure or too similar to other words.
Even worse, The Verge points out that this change means the Times' Wordle skipped over "agora," February 14's original word. This means that players who haven't refreshed their browser since starting to play the game will now see different solutions from everyone else.
The Times did officially comment on the matter, telling ABC News reporter Michael Slezak that "we are updating the word list over time to remove obscure words to keep the puzzle accessible to more people, as well as insensitive or offensive words."
https://twitter.com/MikeySlezak/status/1493344574260924420
While The New York Times does recommend that people just refresh their browsers to access the new list, a puzzle game that's only supposed to have one answer now having multiple is a big problem. It also compounds issues some players were already having with win streaks carrying over.
This whole debacle shows that even Wordle wasn't immune to acquisition woes, even if they weren't the paywall-related problems we originally expected. Avid Wordle players are best off refreshing their browser or redownloading the game for the smoothest experience, but this issue will likely explain any future confusion one might have if someone posts a Wordle with a different answer.