There were two correct answers to today’s Wordle — again. What happened?
If you’re still playing Wordle as part of your daily routine — and perhaps sharing your results with friends — you might have noticed something odd about two of the daily puzzles this week.
▪ The confusion started Monday, May 9, when there were two correct answers to puzzle 324. That’s unusual, because there’s usually just one puzzle released for the game every day, with just one correct answer.
The New York Times explained the glitch in an announcement Monday, saying they removed the original word because it was “closely connected to a major recent news event” and the company wanted the daily game to “remain distinct from the news.” The company then replaced the word, but some users still got the original word instead.
▪ But the confusion and glitches didn’t stop there. Several Twitter users reported Tuesday that they continued to experience two different correct answers for Tuesday’s daily Wordle, puzzle 325.
Longtime Wordle players may recall that this isn’t the first time such a glitch has happened. The popular word game, which was created by Josh Wardle and is now run by the New York Times, had two correct answers for a previous puzzle in late March. (Note: For a time, an archive of past Wordle puzzles created by a Duke University student was active online. It was recently taken down by NYT.)
So, what caused the glitch in puzzles 324 and 325? Here are some answers.
Warning: The story below contains both correct answers to Wordle puzzles 324 and 325. If you haven’t played Wordle today and don’t want the answer to be spoiled, we advise you to stop reading here and come back after you’ve completed the puzzle.
What are the two correct answers to Wordle 324?
Depending on which puzzle you played Monday, the correct answer was either FETUS or SHINE.
How did the glitch happen?
The New York Times said in an announcement Monday that the glitch happened after the company replaced the puzzle’s original word, FETUS, with the new word, SHINE.
If Wordle users didn’t refresh their browser from the last time they played the game — likely the day before — the puzzle didn’t load the new word, and players were left with the old word. The old word was erased for users who refreshed their browser, who got the new word instead.
“You won’t receive the outdated version if you have refreshed your browser window,” The Times said in its announcement of the glitch. “But we know that some people won’t do that and, as a result, will be asked to solve the outdated puzzle.”
Players also could have gotten the FETUS puzzle if they were playing a cached or archived version of the game.
Why were there two answers to Wordle 324?
The Times made the change because FETUS is a word that “seems closely connected to a major recent news event,” the company said in its announcement. That event is the recent leak of a draft Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade, a decades-old ruling that protects the right to abortion in the U.S.
In the announcement about the word change and subsequent glitch, the Times called the word “an outdated answer,” given the recent news. The company discovered last week that FETUS was an answer to an upcoming puzzle, and then “switched it for as many solvers as possible.”
The word was originally loaded into the game last year, the Times said.
The company made the decision to change the word because it wants “Wordle to remain distinct from the news,” the announcement said.
What are the two correct answers to Wordle puzzle 325?
Depending on which puzzle you played Tuesday, the correct answer was either BUTCH or GECKO.
Why were there two answers to Wordle 325?
Unlike Monday’s glitch, for which the New York Times released an explanation for the glitch, the reasoning behind Tuesday’s glitch is less clear.
It appears, based on reports from Wordle users on Twitter, that users who got FETUS as the answer for their puzzle 324 on Monday got BUTCH as the answer for their puzzle 325 on Tuesday — though some Twitter users reported that some players they knew who got FETUS on Monday got GECKO on Tuesday.
Users who got SHINE as their answer on Monday likely got GECKO as their answer on Tuesday.
Though the New York Times has not released an explanation for the puzzle 325 glitch, the company has said in the past that such glitches arise after words are removed from the game and users do not refresh their browser before playing.
It’s likely — though not confirmed — that users who did not refresh their browser before playing puzzle 325 got the original BUTCH answer, while other users got GECKO. While such glitches have happened in the past, it appears that this is the first time there have been different correct answers to Wordle for two days in a row.
The New York Times said Monday that the company is “busy revamping Wordle’s technology so that everyone always receives the same word. We are committed to ensuring that tens of millions of people have a gratifying and consistent experience, every day.”
Other Wordle puzzles with two correct answers
Although the Times called the glitch “a very unusual circumstance,” there have been at least two other occasions where there have been two correct answers to a given day’s Wordle.
▪ In late March, there were two correct answers to puzzle 284. Multiple Twitter users at the time have said the glitch occurred because the Times thought the original word for the puzzle, HARRY, might be too “obscure,” since it is commonly known as a proper noun, instead of a verb. The word was replaced with STOVE.
▪ A similar incident occurred in February, around the time the New York Times bought Wordle. In that instance, the original word, AGORA, was thought to be too obscure, and was replaced with AROMA.
The Times removed “a number of words,” including AGORA, from the puzzle when they acquired the game, either for being “inappropriate” or “obscure,” a February report from Yahoo News says.
This story was originally published May 9, 2022 at 10:05 AM.
