Some strongly worded letters.
Bad news, Wordle fans—the people who maintain your favourite puzzle game don’t want you to play it. Wordle took the internet by storm back in 2021 and, uh, hasn’t really stopped, as evidenced by the fact we put out hints for it every week. Rightfully dubbed “the hottest puzzle game in the world” by us at the time, it’s the rare instance in which we actually felt it right to review a browser game (it got an 80, by the way).
Which puts me, as someone who writes news, for a website that posts routine guides on the thing, in the slightly awkward position of telling you that the New York Times’ tech staff doesn’t want you to play it. While the prospect of the election is name-dropped by said staff (and is certainly used as leverage), and the New York Times itself has landed in hot water in the past due to its controversial coverage, the actual reasons are a lot more typical (via Eurogamer).
After “rounds of intense bargaining”, the Times Tech Guild, composed of around 600 union staff members, is now officially on strike. A statement shared on X by the guild alleges that “Times management has engaged in numerous labour law violations, including implementing return-to-office mandates without bargaining and attempting to intimidate members through interrogations about their strike intentions.”
Kathy Zhang, a Senior Analytics Member at the Times, adds that “our union members and bargaining committee have done everything possible to avoid this ULP strike … management is more willing to risk our election coverage than [it is] to agree to a fair deal with its workers. They have left us no choice but to demonstrate the power of our labour on the picket line.”
As the statement notes, this would be the first strike to coincide with a presidential election since 1964. Susan DeCavara, the president of the NewsGuild of New York, adds: “We have been sounding the alarm for weeks and cleared our schedules to get this contract done before the election week deadline … we’re disheartened that the Times is willing to gamble with its election coverage to avoid agreeing to a fair and just contract.”
As for what the guild wants from Times readers, it’s “asking readers to honour the digital picket line and not play popular NYT games such as Wordle and Connections”, or even to “use the NYT Cooking app”. And, hey—it’s not like boycotts aren’t effective, but I’m not so certain Wordle fans are going to rally behind the striking members no matter how much they ask, only because gamers are notoriously rubbish at boycotts.
Review bombs, sure, but I’ve yet to see a gaming boycott that actually manifested much of anything, and the audience for Wordle probably isn’t that tuned in to the strike action of specific (if vital) members of the press. Here’s hoping it’s all squared away before an already-messy election gets that bit messier.
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