New York Times Scrambles to Remove ‘Fetus’ as Answer to Today’s Wordle: ‘Entirely Unintentional and a Coincidence’

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For some users on Monday, the solution to the daily Wordle might seem extremely timely.

If Wordle players did not refresh their browser window prior to loading Monday’s puzzle, the answer they were asked to solve was “fetus” — a word which has obviously been in the news in recent days, given last week’s leaked Supreme Court draft opinion which would overturn Roe v. Wade. The New York Times, which recently purchased the popular word game and has operated it for the past several months, says that the words are loaded into the game well in advance, and when Monday’s solution was discovered, they tried to change it.

In a statement published by the Times, Everdeen Mason — the Times’ editorial director for games — explained that the solution was purely a product of happenstance.

“Some users may see an outdated answer that seems closely connected to a major recent news event,” Mason wrote. “This is entirely unintentional and a coincidence — today’s original answer was loaded into Wordle last year.”

Mason went on to add that Wordle technology is in the process of being overhauled, and that soon, all users will receive the same word in circumstances such as this.

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