When Wordle moved to the New York Times’ website, I stopped playing it. I’m glad the creator got a big chunk of money, but having it under the auspices of a media company which has fallen so far from its best days took something away from it. An article I came across said that the Times made a few changes, including removing some unpleasant words from its vocabulary. The article mentioned “slave” and “lynch.” It’s not a huge deal, but it smacks of the notion that you can make bad things go away by erasing their names.

Wondering what other words the Times might have excluded, I made a list of others to try. By the Wordle rules, they all have to be five letters. My criterion was not just that the words refer to bad things, but that their mention can make you cringe. This is very subjective, of course. I confirmed that “slave” and “lynch” weren’t recognized, and neither was “COVID.” But it recognized “bigot,” “hates,” “kills,” “raped,” “stabs,” and “thief.”

Wordle has two word lists. One is the words that can be the target you’re trying to guess, and the other, larger list is the allowed guesses. Removing unpleasant words from the target list is reasonable; it doesn’t hurt anything to omit targets that could make players’ experiences uncomfortable. But smart players guess words strategically, whether they think they’re the target or not. A word like “thane” or “stone” is a good first guess because all its letters occur in many English words. Whether the letters match or not, the game’s response reduces your search space faster than guessing words like “gyves” would. Even if such a word isn’t in the target list, it’s a good strategic choice. The words “slave,” “COVID,” and “lynch” aren’t especially good strategically, so their omission doesn’t hinder players much. If you guess a word that Wordle doesn’t recognize, you can delete it and try something else without its counting against you. The game’s refusal to accept those words might save you a guess if the target is “slate” or “lunch.”

Is there a moral in this for writers? Just that tiptoeing around delicate subjects is generally futile. If you’re writing for children, of course you have to be careful. When you write for an adult audience, sweeping unpleasant topics under the rug does a disservice to those affected. If it’s a word game, nobody cares. If it’s a history textbook, that’s a problem.