Changes are coming to Wordle

By Frank Pallotta, CNN Business

Changes are coming for Wordle … again.

For starters the New York Times this week named Tracy Bennett the new editor of Wordle, the wildly popular online puzzle game that gives players six chances to guess a five-letter word daily.

With an editor in place, the Times said that the game is shifting away from the preselected words of Josh Wardle, the puzzle’s creator. It will, instead, include words that the New York Times has chosen.

Also changing: The answer will never be a plural that ends in “s” or “es.” However, you can guess plural words to help you eliminate possible words.

“Wordle’s gameplay will stay the same, and answers will be drawn from the same basic dictionary of answer words, with some editorial adjustments to ensure that the game stays focused on vocabulary that’s fun, accessible, lively and varied,” Everdeen Mason, the Times’ editorial director of games, said on Monday.

Mason added that “while the answer list is curated, the much larger dictionary of English words that are valid guesses will not be curated. What solvers choose to use as guess words is their private choice.”

The Times bought Wordle for “low seven figures” earlier this year. It’s a part of the Times’ portfolio of online games that includes the Crossword and Spelling Bee.

Wordle, which was turned into a board game in July, has been a huge success for the news company, helping boost the number of digital subscriptions for the newspaper.

“Wordle brought an unprecedented tens of millions of new users to the Times, many of whom stayed to play other games which drove our best quarter ever for net subscriber additions to Games,” said CEO Meredith Kopit Levien in the earnings release from May.

— CNN Business’ Jordan Valinsky contributed to this report.

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