Twitter Banned A Wordle-Spoiling Bot Because It Disrupts Others' Experience

25/01/2022

Wordle is an online word game developed by Josh Wardle, and it isn't like most other games out there that demand high and frequent engagements.

Wordle takes a totally different approach.

Rather than making people to play the game as often as possible, Wordle can only be played once a day.

The concept and the gameplay of the Wordle aren't anything new. In fact, the rules are intuitive for those people who grew up playing word games such as Scrabble, or a code-breaking game such as Mastermind.

Wordle combined this familiarity with an opportunity to show mastery and to improve performance over time, a blend which enabled players to enter into a "flow state." Because of this, the game managed to catch the world's attention by storm.

And because of that, trolls have been creating bots on Twitter with the purpose to create spoilers about tomorrow's word.

And Twitter is not liking that.

Knowing that Wordle's fame is partly boosted with the many users sharing their scores on Twitter, the microblogging site doesn't want those people to see spoilers of what's ahead.

Because of this, the social media has suspended a bot account that responded to posts about Wordle.

The account that had the handle @wordlinator, can appear to automatically reply to tweets by sharing results with a message and the Wordle's tomorrow's answer.

"Guess what. People don’t care about your mediocre linguistic escapades. To teach you a lesson, tomorrow’s word is, [....]” the account automatic tweet said.

The account does this with the purpose to ruin the game because Wordle changes the word only once a day.

Wordlinator was able to guess tomorrow's word by taking advantage of Wordle's less-than-secure JavaScript coding, which apparently listed all 2,315 of the game's five-letter puzzles, in order, and in plaintext. The JavaScript file is easy to access by anyone on the web, as it is referenced in the web page's source code.

Wardle as the game's creator, might not thought, or even wanted to secure this JavaScript, considering that he created Wordle for his partner, and also for some of his friends.

But since the game has become a phenomenon, trolls are taking advantage of the lax security to effectively see into the future and spoil the fun.

Wordle answers
Inside this JavaScript file from Wordle, resides all 2,315 of the game's five-letter puzzles, in order, and in plaintext.

Twitter banned Wordlinator because it allegedly violated the platform’s rules about sending high-volume, unsolicited replies to other users. Accounts are not allowed "to disrupt others’ experience," the company said.

Wordle, which doesn't have an app and can only be played using a browser, is a very simple game.

Players guess a five-letter word, with each letter filling a square. Those squares will turn green, yellow or gray to indicate whether a letter is in the right space, in the word but in a different spot, or not in the word at all. Players who attempt to guess the world are given six tries.

To make it more convenient, the game also mark the letters on the virtual keyboard with the same colors, in order to help players in their attempts.

But still, considering the humongous number of potential 5-letter words as answers, Wordle is brutal.

Yet, people seemed to love it.

Many people have taken to social media to share the square emojis that show how they arrived at that day’s answer. At times, the virality of Wordle is so intense that a number of Twitters complained about seeing too many of the people they've followed tweeted about Wordle.

Wordle is the internet's drug. It's the web's and social media's addiction.

In during this time, no spoilers are welcome.