One of the key things about Wordle is that everyone gets the same answer each day. Or is it? There have been four occasions when the game has served up two different solutions, causing no end of consternation among players.

The first two were victims of the New York Times’ purchase of the game in February 2022. The NYT removed around a dozen words that it decided were too difficult for players, or that were in some way controversial.

However, at that time people could play either via the NYT’s games site, or via the original Wordle website created by Josh Wardle. And unfortunately, the changes made by the NYT didn’t always filter through correctly to the original version.

The result was that on February 15, 2022 some people got AROMA and some the much harder AGORA for puzzle #241. Then on March 30, the same thing happened with STOVE and HARRY for game #284; the NYT thought people would only consider HARRY to be a name, and not a verb (as in to harrass), so it removed it.

The problem reoccurred in May 2022. On May 10 (game #324), the NYT removed the word FETUS in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision to repeal Roe vs Wade, deeming it too controversial. Instead, most players got SHINE. The next day, some players got GECKO while others received BUTCH, due to the NYT’s servers not yet having reset for everyone from the previous day’s change.