Wordle’s getting a boss

World-straddling behemoth of a guessing game Wordle has welcomed its own overlord this week in the form of an editor. The New York Times have announced that Tracy Bennett is now in charge of curating the word list for the puzzle game, which was acquired by the newspaper back in January. Wordle will be programmed and tested just like the NYT’s Spelling Bee and Crossword.

Up to this week, Wordle had been using an answer list generated by its creator, Josh Wardle. The NYT said they’d spent most of the past year nestling Wordle within their puzzle apps, but things have reached a stage where editing the game like their others is possible. Bennett’s job as Wordle editor will be to “ensure that the game stays focused on vocabulary that’s fun, accessible, lively and varied”, the NYT said. Answers will be curated, but the guessing dictionary ain’t, so feel free to go wild with those.

I’ve been playing Wordle pretty religiously for the whole of 2022 while on daily excursions to the lavatory, so I’m glad to hear it’s getting a bit more active curation behind the word list. Not to sound like a complete smug git or anything, but I’ve been finding Wordle weirdly easy in recent weeks. Bennett’s only just taken over editing the game as of November 7th, so hopefully it’ll begin to pose more of a challenge again in time. The NYT’s Wordlebot companion app recommended an official starting word, SLATE, back in August. I’ve been using IRATE, myself.

You can play Wordle in your browser for free at the NYT site here. If you want to know what today’s Wordle answer is then check Ollie’s daily post.