‘Who uses this word!?’: Players in uproar over Wordle 246

Warning: Spoilers ahead

Kate Ng
Sunday 20 February 2022 15:14 GMT
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Wordle fans call out New York Times for 'trolling millennials' with hard words

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Another day, another Wordle that has befuddled players and stirred up frustration over the viral word game.

Twitter uses took to the platform in droves again to express their outrage at the puzzle, which was recently bought by The New York Times (NYT) from creator Josh Wardle for an undisclosed seven-figure sum.

The past week has seen players complain that the game is getting “too hard” to play, with some theorising that the NYT purposely chooses the most difficult five-letter words to challenge them.

This is despite the publication’s promise that the gameplay would not change after it purchased the game.

It also comes after Wordle officially migrated to the NYT’s games platform on 11 February, leading to a tumultuous week of interrupted streaks and people finding their results were different from one another.

Today’s Wordle 246 result left many frustrated and wondering if it was a real or even commonly used word.

(*Warning: Spoilers ahead*)

The word of the day is “tacit”, which means to have “understood or made known without being put into words”, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

However, a number of people said they had never heard the word “tacit” before or did not know what it meant.

Others were thrown off by the use of a double-letter word again. Wordle 245 was also a double-letter word.

One person joked: Meanwhile, at Wordle HQ: “Now start using words that don’t exist!”

Another wrote in capital letters: “WHO USES THIS WORD!?”

A third admitted that they had to “search up words to find this because it was so confusing”.

Not even celebrities were spared from the Wordle frustration. Comedian Rosie Jones wrote: “At this point Wordle is my daily reminder that there’s S*** LOADS of words in the English language that I have never even heard of.”

Some people noticed a spike in Google searches for the meaning of the word “tacit”, which could indicate that many players have learned a new word today.

If you need to brush up on your Wordle game, you can read the top tips and tricks from an equally Wordle-obsessed linguistics professor to help improve your streak.

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