A Crisis comes to Wordle: Reusing old words

Word Reuse vs. Novelty

• Many argue that most players prefer common, familiar words; reusing them is better than pushing into obscure territory.
• Only a small subset of “min-max” players care about excluding already-used answers; for the majority, reuse every few years is seen as trivial.
• Some players are disappointed because they’ve long used a favorite starter word hoping it will one day be the answer; reusing words may delay or remove that thrill.

Curation, Accessibility, and Fun

• Early Wordle reportedly used a hand-curated list vetted for familiarity, which several commenters credit as key to its broad appeal.
• Commenters stress there’s “no point” in technically valid but unknown words for a mass-audience puzzle; others counter that specialized vocabulary is sometimes used to signal in-group status or exclude.
• Several game creators in the thread describe spending as much or more effort on word-list curation as on coding, emphasizing how many valid-but-not-fun words exist.

Two Lists: Answers vs Allowed Guesses

• Wordle maintains a large list of valid guesses and a smaller, more common-word list for actual answers.
• Estimates: ~2,300 answer words; ~1,600+ days played means roughly two‑thirds to three‑quarters of the answer list has been used.
• One analysis of NYT’s current JS shows ~14,855 allowed words, with ~2,309 likely reserved as answers, and suggests the selection logic has changed (possibly server-side) to prevent “card counting” based on a pre-baked sequence.

What Counts as a “Word”?

• Debate around words like “aahed”: some claim onomatopoeias are just phonetic spellings and not “real” words; others argue that once you can inflect them (e.g., past tense), they clearly are.
• NYT’s Letter Boxed is cited as including extremely obscure items like “troughgeng,” provoking questions about consistency across NYT word games.

Comparisons to Other Games

• Crosswords, Scrabble, and NYT’s Connections are discussed as contrasting models:
  • Crosswords often lean on “crosswordese” and culturally narrow references, which some find snobbish or exclusionary.
  • Scrabble is defended as a competitive game where obscure words are part of the skill; Wordle, as a daily puzzle, can safely hide its constraints from players.
  • Connections draws criticism for regional homophones and questionable semantic groupings, undermining trust in the setter.

Language Pedantry & Miscellany

• Several comments nitpick the article’s use of “begs the question,” arguing for the older logical-fallacy sense vs the now-common “raises the question.”
• Brief side discussion about archaic spellings like “valew” and their (lack of) legitimacy today.