A week ago I confessed that I did not really know what Wordle is. I still don't and have no intention of finding out, ever.
But I do know it has something to do with words—and I also know that the game's new owner, The New York Times, is in the process of censoring whole classes of words from the game's dictionary:
Wordle, the online word game that has become an internet phenomenon, has banned a number of "insensitive or offensive words" from the game since being purchased by the New York Times in January 2022, including the word "slave."
Users this week began noticing that words such as "slave," "wh[***]" and "b[****]" are no longer able to be entered in the game, where players have up to six attempts to guess a new five-letter word each day.
Well, gee, why did those specific words get axed from the game?
"We are updating the word list over time to remove obscure words to keep the puzzles accessible to more people, as well as insensitive or offensive words," New York TimesSpokesman Jordan Cohen told Newsweek.
Ahhh, yes, "obscure" words such as... "slave." Or wait, maybe that was one of the "offensive" words. Who knows? Maybe they're one and the same.
I mean, after all, you never know: If a slave, somewhere, happened to be playing Wordle, and the word for the day was "slave," that could be really bad (not sure if you were aware, but slaves regularly have access to smartphones and internet-based word puzzles.)
