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Thousands of people apparently cheat at Wordle every day

The popular word-guessing game Wordle inspires large numbers of people to either cheat by looking up answers or to stubbornly stick with favourite starting words

By Jeremy Hsu

14 September 2023

A game of World

A suspiciously high number of people guess the Wordle word on their first try

Emre Akkoyun/Shutterstock

Thousands of people are probably cheating to solve the daily word-guessing game Wordle on the first try – and many more players remain surprisingly loyal to their favourite words.

Wordle, now owned by The New York Times, challenges people to guess a five-letter word within six tries and has about 2 million English-language players alone. But every day, far more Wordle players solve the puzzle on their first turn than would be expected by chance, says James Dilger …

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