Players’ brains were in a Wordle of hurt.
As if the New York Times’ new Wordle wasn’t “hard” enough, incensed social media users claimed they were unable to win Thursday’s game due to too many vocabulary variations in Twitter rants detailing the puzzle curveball.
(Warning:spoilers below.)
For the uninitiated, the viral brain teaser grants players six attempts to guess a new five-letter word each day. However, these apparently weren’t enough for players of today’s Wordle 243, who complained that the Wordle of the day — “shake” — had far too many other alternative options to rule out.
Specifically, while many Wordlers were able to place “S”, “H”, “A” and “E,” they couldn’t guess “K” — one of the lesser-used consonants — and ended up selecting one of the structure’s more common variations, such as “shape,” “shave” and “share,” per the angry Twitter posts.
“I don’t usually share my #Wordle result but OMG this made me so mad!” vented one outraged Wordler, who lost after getting four out of the five letters correct with her five guesses.
“Nobody talk to me for 24 hours. I can’t believe this,” fumed another of the vexing Wordle hurdle. One disillusioned player called the game the “worst Wordle in the history of Wordles.”
Many players claimed that the baffling puzzle caused them to break their winning streaks with one lamenting: “Just lost my first ever Wordle! annoying thing is, I knew what the word was but thought it had already been an answer. Gonna need some time to recover.”
They might seem like poor sports, however, as many Twitter users bemoaned, the plethora of word choices reduced the normally engaging brain teaser to a garden-variety guessing game.
“What a frustrating answer. Why choose a word where it’s just dumb luck you strike the right letter from multiple options,” wrote one fed-up Wordler.
This was just one of many complaints plaguing the online puzzle after it was migrated last week to the website of the Times, which bought it from creator Josh Wardle in January for an “undisclosed” seven-figure sum.
Just yesterday, the publication was accused of “trolling millennials” with a Wordle of the day “so obscure” only Bob the Builder could solve it.
In addition, Wordle was allegedly hacked following the acquisition, with the code-cracker reportedly divulging the game’s algorithm and posting spoilers for nearly 120 upcoming words. The techspert who tweeted his findings may have been onto something: So far, as of Monday, Feb. 14, the answer reveals have been correct.
