Shocking! Wordle answer cheating rampant after acquisition by the New York Times, says report

Players are cheating on Wordle! Wordle answer may be tough, but hey, it's only a game, right? Wrong! At least, that is the mindset of many players for whom finding the Wordle answer justifies all means, even cheating! A report says that there is Wordle answer cheating is rampant. And shockingly, the incidents of Wordle cheating has increased at a significant rate ever since it was acquired by the New York Times in late January, 2022. The report brings out some interesting data around the behavior of users playing the Wordle game. The game does come with some high-stakes as there is a winning streak counter and bragging rights on social media on the line. With one element of the game dedicated towards showing off your vocabulary among your friends and followers online, it would make some sense, in a very twisted and unethical way, on why people are more inclined towards cheating to find the right Wordle answer. However, the intriguing question to answer is why did it start after the NYT acquisition? Read on to find out.

The report was published by WordFinder and it found that the frequency of searching ‘today’s Wordle’ increased once the game created by Josh Wardle was acquired by the New York Times. The report, however, is limited to the US and the same may not be applicable for other regions. But it does give an insight into the behavior of players. "We analysed Google Trends data over the past three months to see how often Wordle players cheated by looking up answers online," WordFinder wrote in its post.

Cheating to get the Wordle answer increases after acquisition

The report gives more details on the days and the areas where cheating was significantly higher than others. For instance, SWILL, which was the secret word on Wordle for February 19 (Wordle 245) and AROMA on February 15 (Wordle 241) were the days when players cheated on the game the most. Also, interestingly, the cheating keywords were at its highest frequency between 7AM and 8AM. Since the game clock resets at midnight and the game has become a morning ritual for many, it is understandable why people were cheating to find the Wordle answer in that time period.

Similarly, some regions in the USA cheated more than others. The biggest offender was New Hampshire followed by Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Massachusetts and Maine. Apparently these regions showed a very high spike for ‘today’s Wordle’ keyword search on the day TACIT and DODGE were the word of the day.

And while the timings of the exponential increase in cheating to find the Wordle answer somehow points towards the New York Times, it might not be a case of correlation being equal to causation. The NYT acquisition also created a huge buzz around the game and made it more popular. The game gained millions of new users and as such, the overall volume of cheating would also increase. NYT has stated before that it has not changed anything about the game, which has also been confirmed by various analysts who went through the source code of Wordle. But, this report at least brings one interesting information. That not all posts online where users guess the word in 2-3 attempts are genuine.

Well, Wordle answer cheating may be easy, but that is not what the game is about. In fact, Wordle cheaters are missing the entire point altogether.