A sign for The New York Times hangs over the entrance to his building on May 6, 2021 in New York. Mark Lenihan / Associated Press
The New York Times quickly changed Monday’s answer to its daily Wordle puzzle for fear that it would be seen as some kind of commentary on the abortion rights debate.
The game, which became a sensation late last year and was bought by The Times in January, gives users six attempts to guess a different five-letter word each day.
Still, The Times got confused when it discovered that Monday’s word, which was introduced into Wordle’s computer program last year, was “fetus.”
The moment was particularly tense given last week’s report on a draft decision by the US Supreme Court, which will overturn a 50-year ruling on women’s ability to have abortions.
The appearance of the “fetus” was “completely unintentional and accidental,” the newspaper said in a statement to readers on Monday.
“At the New York Times Games, we take our role of entertainment and escape seriously and want Wordle to stay separate from the news,” the statement said.
The Times changed Monday’s response to another, and a spokesman said the “vast majority” of consumers had seen it. But some people who haven’t updated their browsers have instead seen a fetus, said spokesman Jordan Cohen.
He would not say whether The Times had received any complaints about the fetus.
Wordle was invented by Josh Wardle, a software engineer from Brooklyn, as a gift for his partner and took off when he started publishing it online. Players guess words and refine the correct answer while the game tells them if their guesses contain letters in the word of the day.
The Times bought his invention for more than $ 1 million and is updating the technology to ensure that every user sees the same word every day, the newspaper said. Cohen said millions of people play Wordle every day.
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