Today’s intended Wordle solution pushed to 2027 due to “major recent news event”

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Ars Technica)

The New York Times has altered the Wordle solutions list to avoid an answer for today's puzzle that would have "seem[ed] closely connected to a major recent news event," as the company put it in a public note this morning.

Today's originally intended solution, FETUS, was first added to the game's word list last year, when Wordle creator Josh Wardle included it among the randomly ordered list of roughly 2,300 five-letter words intended to define the daily word game for years to come. The New York Times has pushed that term to the end of the game's solutions list, where it is now scheduled to appear sometime in late 2027 (it remains to be seen if today's news focus on the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision will still be as much of a concern by then).

Copies of the Wordle webpage on the Internet Archive show the Times making the change for today's puzzle sometime on May 6. As such, players who have not refreshed the Wordle webpage in the last few days "may see an outdated answer that seems closely connected to a major recent news event," as the Times wrote.