Wordle "Out" of 5-Letter Words

The New York Times, the purveyor of Wordle, announced today that they are "out" of acceptable 5-letter words. "We're not really sure what to do next," said Erik Schmidt, part of the Wordle team. "We could start repeating words, or we could start going more obscure." 

Using more obscure 5-letter words has proved to be a problem, however. Earlier this week Schmidt and his team received hate email and negative social media buzz when the Wordle of the day was "rupee." 

"The gist of the emails was that 'rupee' isn't a real English word," Schmidt said, "despite the fact that it is the legitimate English spelling of the currency used by 1.4 billion people in the world." The hashtag #rupeeisntawordle was trending on social media posts criticizing the game, which users play for free, and their "foreign" word choice.

"It just isn't fair that words like that can be part of Wordle," Lauren Jackson, 34, of Arizona said. "I had a 42-day streak going and I lost it all." This sentiment was echoed in other posts, calling the Wordle creators "elitist" and "word snobs." 

Gregory Graf, 58 of Illinois, echoes Jackson's sentiments saying, "I was one of the first people to discover Wordle among my friend group, and I brought a lot of people to the game. I'm disappointed that Wordle would take a left turn like this and use non-standard words." Graf is so offended that he is threatening to give up Wordle for good. "I just don't know if I can support them anymore," he says.

Wordle, which has some people touting it as the word-version of the classic game Mastermind, gives players 6 chances to guess a 5-letter word. The game gives the player feedback in the form of colored tiles when letters are placed correctly. 

Originally, Wordle creators were not anticipating running out of words so soon. "We had a Wordle bank of 2000 words at first, but with the advent of spin-off games like Quordle and Sedecordle, our word bank was decimated." Case-in-point: The Wordle of the Day was repeated in the Quordle a few days ago, and players immediately took to social media criticizing Wordle as "copycats."

Schmidt and his Wordle team are considering jumping into the 6-letter word market, however, he is worried that this may anger players even further. "We've got our best minds working to solve this major issue," Schmidt promises.