The New York Times issued a statement Monday warning that the answer of the day on its popular online game Wordle might appear to be in bad taste for some users.
The company said it usually separates its games content from its news content, but that Monday’s Wordle answer (which, spoiler warning, appears below) broke that rule, and matched the week’s news cycle a little too closely.
“Wordle continues to delight millions of people every day, but as we move it over to The Times’s technology, we have continued to discover challenges,” wrote Everdeen Mason, the company’s editorial director for Games. “Today, for example, some users may see an outdated answer that seems closely connected to a major recent news event.”
The event in question is last week’s Politico scoop — a leaked majority draft opinion showing the Supreme Court is preparing to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, stripping Americans off their constitutional right to access abortion.
The word “fetus” was selected and inserted into the system last year, well before the publication of the Supreme Court draft, which has turbocharged the national conversation around abortion.
“At New York Times Games, we take our role seriously as a place to entertain and escape, and we want Wordle to remain distinct from the news,” Mason wrote.
Mason said the Times took action to change the word for as many users as possible last week, but those who hadn’t refreshed their browser window since would still get the “outdated” answer.
The company bought the viral puzzle game, which gives users six attempts to guess a five-character word, from software engineer Josh Wardle in January.
Over the weekend, activists gathered outside the homes of two conservative Supreme Court justices, Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts, to protest the projected outcome of Roe being overturned. On Sunday, a fire broke out at the Wisconsin Family Action office, an anti-abortion facility in Madison, with the unknown vandals leaving a spray-painted message outside the building: “If abortions aren’t safe, then you aren’t either.”
Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers insisted Roe was unconstitutional and said they felt for pregnant women in a challenging situation.
“I’m empathetic to all these ladies who find themselves in very difficult times and very difficult decisions,” governor of Mississippi, Tate Reeves, told NBC’s Meet The Press.