WATCH: Wordle’s editor dishes on most-hated word choices
Heather Hamilton
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The editor of the online word game Wordle explained the process of choosing the daily word and revealed which words have caused the most backlash.
Tracy Bennett is the editor of Wordle, an online game that first began in 2018 and was acquired by the New York Times in 2022. The game allows players six attempts at figuring out a five-letter mystery word.
Those mystery words come from a list original to the game’s beginning days and are chosen via a “random generator.” Bennett told NBC’s The Today Show that she researches each word for any “profane or derogatory” meanings.
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“I wouldn’t want to run a word like that,” Bennett said, explaining she also considers any negative connotation to political or current events. “I look at the week coming up, and I just kind of check the news cycle to see if there’s anything that would make one of those words feel more hurtful or insensitive than normal.”
Bennett said the words that have caused the most disdain among players, which she said indicates their “passion,” include those with “secondary meanings” or those that are “not familiar” enough.
“Obscurity. So, a word that is not familiar to people, like ‘parer,’” Bennett said. “If you have a word that has very common letters, and you have four letters in place, like, for example, blank-O-U-N-D, that fifth letter — [it could be] found, mound, round, sound — there’s like eight [possible combinations], I think.”
“So, that’s based on luck rather than deduction,” she continued. “People don’t like when a word feels unfair. We get that.”
She also said that she receives complaints about words that might be too regional, such as the word “condo,” which is not as popular of a term outside the U.S.
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Bennett called her job a “big responsibility” despite the fact that it only takes about 30 minutes of her time each day.
“I’m accountable to the whole world for this one word,” she said.
Wordle reportedly notched 3 million players worldwide in 2022.