16 February 2022

AGORA, PUPAL, LYNCH, FIBRE, SLAVE, and WENCH

Wordle was created in such a way that it was possible to download a file containing all 2300+ of the original words (in the order they were to be played).  You have to dig a little, but the list is fairly easy to find.  And when the NY Times took-over, they deployed their version of the game on the NYT web servers with a much longer word list (almost 13000 words).

If you thought to do it, it was possible to store your own working copy of the game.  People who did that are continuing to play Wordle with the original list of words.  If you did not save it, you're out of luck; because, the only "official" version of the game is up on the NY Times servers (with their updated word list).

It looks like their editor, Will Shortz, has not changed much of the original list.  He's basically removed just 6 words.  The first of these was yesterday's word .. which was supposed to be AGORA.  But, for whatever reason, NYT decided that was not a good word and they pinched it from the list.  That shifted the whole word list schedule up by one (moving yesterday's word, AROMA, into that slot).

I saved the original word list and wrote a little script to uncover (without spoilering) the other 5 forbidden words that'll never see the light of day.  And here they are:  PUPAL (which was supposed to be the word this upcoming Saturday).  LYNCH (originally scheduled for 20-Mar-2022), FIBRE (10-Apr-2022), SLAVE (20-Apr-2022), and WENCH (20-Jul-2022).