New York Times makes important changes to Wordle

Remember Wordle? The online game was created by Josh Wardle and he eventually sold it to The New York Times for an undisclosed amount believed to be at least $1,000,000. The game gives players six chances to correctly figure out a five-letter word. Each day, a new word is selected with some words harder than others to figure out.

Around a year ago, Wordle was being played by only 90 players each day. But through word of mouth and the addition of a feature that allowed players to share how well they did with that day's word, the game took off and tens of millions of people started to look forward to playing for free every day. Originally played on a web browser, Wordle is now found on the New York Times Crossword app available for both Android and iOS devices.

Wordle, even on the aforementioned New York Times app, is free to play. All you need to do is open a free NYT account.

The Times did announce on Tuesday that it has assigned a dedicated editor to Wordle, Tracy Bennett. And it also made some rule changes that could make the game better. The daily word will now come from a list put together by the Times instead of a list made by game creator Josh Wardle. And the word of the day will no longer include plural three or four-letter words that end with an ES or S.

The newspaper explained what this means when it said, "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."

If you are worried that there will be major wholesale changes made to Wordle, fear not. As the Times said in its announcement today, "Wordle’s gameplay will stay the same, and answers will be drawn from the same basic dictionary of answer words, with some editorial adjustments to ensure that the game stays focused on vocabulary that’s fun, accessible, lively and varied."

One thing that the Times wanted to make clear is that while the word of the day comes from a curated list, players will still be able to make their guesses from a "much larger dictionary of English words that are valid guesses." The statement goes on to say, "What solvers choose to use as guess words is their private choice."