‘How the Wordle Editor Is Ruining Wordle’
Lizzie O’Leary, writing for Slate:
Look: I’m sure that Tracy Bennett, the Wordle editor, is a lovely
person and a skilled crossword editor. But when I do a Wordle and
discover I’ve walked into someone else’s pun, I feel foolish. The
butt of a middlebrow dad joke. I want to tell Joe Kahn that the
Times’ ever-expanding dominion should leave some room for
serendipity and strangeness in the world.No more puns, I beg of you, Wordle queen. I now understand that
you started your reign on November 7 with BEGIN. Please: It’s time
to CEASE.
I saw the Times’s announcement that they’d hired a Wordle editor, but I didn’t realize she was playing puns until the Thankgiving solution was FEAST. I had that one down to *EAST and guessed BEAST first, thinking it wouldn’t be FEAST on Thanksgiving. And when I realized it was, I was furious. Yes, that’s right, I got furious at a free word game.
Count me in with O’Leary — however central puns are to good crossword puzzles, they have no place in Wordle.
