It appears that the Wordle word for May 9 was different for some folks that played earlier today. Sources on Reddit have found that there were two different possible Wordle answers, and some are curious as to why their answers were not the same. Spoiler Warning for the Wordle answer for May 9th.
After the popular word game went viral early in 2022, the New York Times games website purchased Wordle for "seven figures" in a surprise move. After their acquisition, the NYT altered the possible five-letter word list to remove several non-American spellings of words, potentially offensive words like slurs, and more. In spite of this alteration, it looks like one might have slipped through the censoring process, as the word of the day changed partway into the day of May 9.
Early today in the eastern-most parts of the English-speaking world, Wordle players on the NYTs Games website were met with two different answers. While some Wordle players got the word FETUS as the answer for today's puzzle, others ended up with the final answer of SHINE. Based on the time stamps of the Reddit posts, players were getting both words up until very recently.
Why players are getting different answers is not entirely clear, but it might be because of the nature of one of the words. Given the current tension in the United States on Roe vs. Wade's possible removal, the word FETUS might have seemed like a poor choice for the Wordle puzzle answer. It may have been altered by the NYTs team in hopes of the second word being a little less fraught.
Since the New York Times censoring Wordle back in February when the original acquisition happened, some players have complained that the Wordle puzzles have gotten pretentious. It looks as though the viewership of the game has gone down significantly since February, and this just seems like more of the same from the New York Times. The word FETUS is not inherently offensive, and why the word was changed might be yet another reason for some players to complain.
But regardless of why the word of the day was changed, Wordle still is one of the most popular games of 2022. It peaked earlier in the year with more than 300,000 daily players, but has since declined in popularity to less than 100,000 players per day. Of all the 324 total puzzles so far, this is the first of the puzzles that has been plagued with multiple answers on the same site.
Wordle is available for mobile and PC.
Source: Reddit