Heading into All-Star week, Minnesota’s Karl-Anthony Towns finds himself mired in controversy.
Sort of. It’s about Wordle, the wildly popular word game that has blown up in the last few months (and was recently purchased by the New York Times). It’s deceptively simple and addictive — you get six guesses to figure out a five-letter word, with the game telling you what letters you got right and in the right place in the word, the letters you got right but in the wrong place, and the letters you got wrong.
Part of the game’s popularity is it’s easy to share your results on social media (without giving the word away). That’s what Towns did on Friday.
Wordle 237 3/6
— Karl-Anthony Towns (@KarlTowns) February 11, 2022
🟩⬜⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟨⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Morning 🌎! How ya do today???
(NOTE: What follows spoils Friday’s answer.)
Towns apparently got three letters right on the first try, on his second guess got a fourth letter but in the wrong place, then got it right in a fairly impressive three guesses (it took me all six with this word, for the record).
Except...
The word for Friday was “ulcer.” Towns’ Tweet means on his second guess he had the U, E, and R in the right place, but had the C in the wrong place (and one letter just wrong). The problem is no word can be played that has UC?ER (the game does not accept non-words to be played). Wordle fans noticed.
Sup king I was wondering how you got
— Tor (@torkander) February 11, 2022
🟩🟨⬛️🟩🟩 in your second guess? There’s only 26 possible guesses that would give that one & none of them are a word that Wordle accepts
no legal guess path could lead to these results given today's answer. KAT's posting fake stats https://t.co/ZvdeNa1BWf
— Owen Ellickson (@onlxn) February 11, 2022
Towns replied that he had posted the Feb. 10 (Thursday) word answer instead. That makes it possible.
I see the problem hereeeee…..My Wordle shows this as 237 so the word “ulcer” I never got but Lmaoooo if ya mad at my results, than you ain’t gonna be happy about @CallMe_NonStop score 👀 pic.twitter.com/CYu0zEBaUT
— Karl-Anthony Towns (@KarlTowns) February 11, 2022
He gets off the hook on this one, but you can bet he’s going to face Wordle questions All-Star weekend.