Scott Duke Kominers, Columnist

Why One Little Goof Drove Wordle Fans Nuts

A botched word substitution added complexity to a simple game, put politics into an innocent one and spoiled the social cohesion that players cherish.

May 11, 2022 at 12:30 PM UTC

By Scott Duke Kominers

Scott Duke Kominers is the MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a faculty affiliate of the Harvard University department of economics.

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Photographer: Michael Draper/AFP via Getty Images

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Fans of the daily hidden word game “Wordle” woke up Monday to a social media uproar. The New York Times, which owns and operates the game, had made a last-minute change to eliminate the word “fetus,” presumably in deference to sensitivities swirling around a leaked Supreme Court opinion on abortion.

Whatever the motive, the execution was botched and a diversion so popular for its simplicity and innocence lost a little bit of its joy.