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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: To Wordle or Not To Wordle

Open Thread: To Wordle or Not To Wordle

by | 89 Comments

This post is in: 

I don’t read or subscribe to the NYT (they are garbage, just ask Baud) but I do Wordle first thing every morning.  Of course, I hate the NYT for buying Wordle and junking it up with “sign in to blah blah blah” and plastering their name over all of it, but I still Wordle.

It has been a (small) struggle for me not to Wordle this morning as that’s how I start my day.   But I think it’s important to support the employees, so I am not going to Wordle today, even though that means losing my streak.  You know they are going to use that as a simple measure of whether anyone gives a shit about the strike.  They are going to look at the usual number of Wordler’s every day and compare it to today’s numbers.

In case you missed it:

Following months of unsuccessful negotiations over wages, pension plan changes, reduced company health care contributions and other key issues, journalists and other employees at the New York Times are staging a large-scale walkout. The 24-hour strike by more than a thousand members started just after midnight after negotiations stalled over wages, remote work, and proposed changes to the pension plan.

Will the walkout help?  I have no idea.

Washington Post

Reporters won’t write stories or interview sources. Photojournalists will stay home. And if a spate of unsavory language breaks out in the online comments thread posted below a New York Times story, there might not be anyone on hand to delete it.

That’s the expected scenario at the Times on Thursday, after more than 1,100 employees began a day-long work stoppage at midnight in one of the most dramatic labor disputes at the company in decades.

Members of the New York Times Guild — the union that covers about 1,400 Times workers, including non-newsroom departments such as advertising and security — have said the walkout is the culmination of months of frustration over contract negotiations on a range of issues, particularly compensation. The previous employee contract expired in March 2021. In a letter to members this week, union organizers wrote that “we cannot get to a deal until the company makes wage and benefit proposals that truly share the company’s gains with its employees.” They accused the company Wednesday evening of failing to “bargain in good faith.”

So… who’s crossing the picket line to Wordle or do anything else NYT between midnight last night and midnight tonight?

Does this strike matter in the larger scheme of things?

Totally open thread.

Update: h/t Mr. Potato

Reader Interactions

89Comments

  1. 1.

    Bg

    Whole family is going through Wordle withdrawal today. Washington Post has a mini crossword that’s helping some  A bit sad because it’s a way we keep in touch across the country, comparing scores every morning. But we’re united in solidarity with the working journalists.

  2. 2.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    And if a spate of unsavory language breaks out in the online comments thread posted below a New York Times story, there might not be anyone on hand to delete it.

    hmmm…..

  7. 7.

    Josie

    I refused to have any contact with the Times long ago, so there is nothing more I can do. Sorry for those of you in Wordle withdrawal. Try to remember what you did before Wordle was a thing.​
     ETA: I am definitely a fan of nasty comments breaking out in comment threads.

  8. 8.

    Omnes Omnibus

    A principle is only a principle if you are willing to sacrifice for it. A Wordle streak* may seem like an insignificant sacrifice compared to the Bay View Massacre, but it is something. Just don’t expect it to get you a standing O at the Labor Temple

    *I don’t do Wordle.

  9. 9.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I pretty much avoid the NYT out of habit, so I geuss my boycotting them today will go unnoticed.

  10. 10.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I confess to forgetting about the strike this morning and doing the wordle. I feel bad. My mother worked for the Detroit Free Press. Various unions protected the workers there too. Reporters etc were Guild members

  11. 11.

    Ohio Mom

    Yeah, I am missing Wordle ands bunch of the NYT’s other games today.

    The news articles stay up for weeks as do the features, I can catch up with them any time but the games are only up for a day and then they are gone forever.

    I’ll manage but I do have this nagging feeling I’m forgetting to do something.

  13. 13.

    The Moar You Know

    Does this strike matter in the larger scheme of things?

    All strikes matter and anyone who crosses a picket line is human garbage.

    People glom onto their political party of choice for many reasons.  My primary reason for being a Democrat is labor rights.

    Any of you can live without Wordle, whatever the fuck that is, for a day.

  16. 16.

    jonas

    @kmeyerthelurker: ​
      *raises hand* Totally addicted to Worldle. I’m pretty good at geography, so I get most of them in one or two tries, but the ones that throw me are these little South Pacific island nations like Nauru that pop up occasionally.

  17. 17.

    Feathers

    I must confess I did today’s crossword when it went up at 10pm last night. I can do Fridays tomorrow. My streak is less than two weeks old because last weekend is the first time I got through both the Saturday and Sunday puzzles without breaking down and doing the error check. It all feels very fragile.

    On Wordle. It shows you your current streak and your longest streak. Assuming that your current streak is your longest, after tomorrow just add your current and longest for your “strike adjusted” streak.

  19. 19.

    Steeplejack

    I “accidentally” did the Wordle at 12:01 a.m. last night, but I am staying off the Times site today, which is a big deal for newshound me. Management apparently has been delaying and negotiating in bad faith for a year and a half. They need a little jolt.

  22. 22.

    James E Powell

    I don’t have any problem skipping wordle. I am conflicted about the fate of the employees because while I don’t want them to suffer, part of me wants the FTFNYT to collapse & die.

  24. 24.

    Elizabelle

    @James E Powell:  their new editor is a shitshow.  not the relief from clueless dean banquet we hoped for.  of course, the problem begins w the owners/publishers.

    and who knows where they actually get their money?  hard to believe they’re signing up actual subscribers.

  30. 30.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    Pretty sure there are some high priced and worthless pundits they could lose and have money left over to cover benefits for real reporters. It is all a question of priority. I hope the NY Times figures that out.

  31. 31.

    Elizabelle

    @WaterGirl:  I kept it, but plan to call to cancel and hope they’ll give me a bargain basement rate, and rebate me for the Cooking subscription.  If they don’t, I will just let it go.  For good.

    They are such a seriously flawed paper.  They’re dangerous.  Red Wave!!

  32. 32.

    Anonymous At Work

    I mean, have they seen how they covered the rail strike?  Did they run to the owners and sympathize with the lost profits (OH! the Humanity!) while asking the workers why they wanted to ruin the economy?  If so, I dunno.  One would hope that this incident sticks in their mind when writing coverage but sociopath-level disassociation is a top-tier journalist skill in political coverage.

  33. 33.

    Elizabelle

    OK, at first I was not sure if this was a parody (thanks, Onion), or a review of a disastrous concert performance.  But it’s real.  From the WaPost:
    Celine Dion shares diagnosis of incurable stiff-person syndrome

    Celine Dion announced that she was diagnosed with a rare and incurable neurological condition known as stiff-person syndrome, and that she will cancel or postpone dozens of shows in her “Courage World Tour.”

    In an emotional, five-minute Instagram video posted Thursday, Dion, 54, told fans: “I’ve been dealing with problems with my health for a long time, and it’s been really difficult for me to face these challenges and to talk about everything that I’ve been going through.”

    “Recently, I’ve been diagnosed with a very rare neurological disorder called the stiff-person syndrome,” she continued.

     …  Stiff-person syndrome, or SPS, is a neurological and autoimmune disorder that causes muscles to stiffen progressively, causing painful and debilitating spasms. In more extreme forms, it can prevent people from walking or going about their day-to-day lives.

    Loud noises or emotional distress can trigger the spasms, causing people with SPS to fall and injure themselves — leaving some of them “afraid to leave the house,” according to the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).

    It is not curable, but symptoms can be managed and alleviated through medication. Experts don’t know what causes SPS, which affects women more than men, according to NINDS.

  34. 34.

    Jay C

    @ian:

    yes, President  Biden made the announcement about Griner earlier this morning. The swap was made in Abu Dhabi for some reason, and she is flying home today.

    Of course, the RWNJ media is in a frothing frenzy of fault-finding Outrage:

  39. 39.

    Matt McIrvin

    I used to work for a company that employed both union technicians and non-union software engineers. The software people were formally classed as “management” and this struck me as odd until I realized it meant we were expected, nay ordered, to cross picket lines and do scab work in the event of a strike. Fortunately it never came to that for me personally, but it took me too long to realize that it would be a “moral obligation to quit job” situation (I wouldn’t exactly have been starving).

  40. 40.

    Rachel Bakes

    Three skipping Wordle in our house today. Got my game fix in by continuing Globle. Not crossing the picket line here. Had to search this morning to get answer as to whether they were striking or not-didn’t want to search and give NYT inadvertent clicks

  42. 42.

    GibberJack

    There’s a disconnect between FTFNYT and “I hope their employees get better working conditions”.

    If you canceled your subscription because the NYT is garbage, that impacted the employees as well as the owner. And good on you. You did the right thing.

    If you think the NYT is fascist-curious (and indeed they always have been) and you think they are in the tank for Republican rule (and indeed we have seen they are), or, if you remember back far enough, that they helped create a lie for a war of choice (under the byline of Judith Miller et al) then why would you want to support their employees?

    I hate Focus on the Family and the Federalist Society and no way would I help or support in any way the people who work there to be paid more and get a nice pension.

    Fuckem.

    I want the NYT to fail, and I do not want to help their employees in any way.

  45. 45.

    schrodingers_cat

    I haven’t read NYT since they stuck a knife in HRC’s back with But Her Emailz. But I will continuing doing the Wordle and the Quordle and the Waffle. I broke my streak when I was traveling to India and had no Wi-Fi access on the flight.

  47. 47.

    ChasM

    I vowed to quit wordle after my first loss, and I kept my promise.

    Now I just do Worldle, which is similar but for geography. I don’t worry if I lose that one.

  51. 51.

    Steeplejack

    @WaterGirl:

    It shows you (on my computer, at least) wrong letters in black, misplaced letters in yellow and correct letters in green, pretty much like Wordle. Then you type another word, etc.

  53. 53.

    Ohio Mom

    @Alison Rose: You can jerry-rig a version of today’s Spelling Bee by by going to https://www.sbsolver.com/answers

    This site isn’t associated with the times, just some geeks having fun.

    They list today’s letters as Paglnoy, with P in the middle of the circle. The total answers add up to:
    words: 46
    score: 193 pts
    pangrams: 2
    bingo: yes

  54. 54.

    Ohio Mom

    @schrodingers_cat: And as those white men and women voted for Walker, they congratulated themselves for not being bigots because how could they be prejudiced, they are voting for a Black man.

  59. 59.

    Miss Bianca

     

    @WaterGirl: possible, I suppose. But if true, that means that exit polling has become just as unreliable as any other type of polling. In other words…useless.

  61. 61.

    Jess

    I stopped playing Wordle a few months ago because I was so f-ing busy, but I was thinking about starting up again now that the semester is over. Oh well. I guess I’ll buy another crossword book instead.

  71. 71.

    Brachiator

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Also, I think these are the exit polls for the November Georgia Senate election,  not the runoff.

    I previously looked at a CNN exit poll for the November election. The numbers and percentages appear to be identical.

     

    @Miss Bianca:

    And yet, Warnock prevailed. Makes me wonder about the percentage of POC as a part of Georgia’s total population.

    The exit poll response was about 28 percent black. Georgia is about 33 percent black.

  74. 74.

    Salt Water

    Canuckle is a good alternative. It’s on hiatus but you can play their archive.

    My brother enjoys Quordle and Octordle. There’s also Nerdle (numbers) and as mentioned Worldle (geography).

    Anti-Wordle is a good one too.

  75. 75.

    Brachiator

    @Ohio Mom:

    And as those white men and women voted for Walker, they congratulated themselves for not being bigots because how could they be prejudiced, they are voting for a Black man.

    The strongest bigots may have voted for the libertarian candidate or just stayed home rather than vote for either black candidate. But the wild thing is that 70 percent of white voters chose the person that Trump wanted. They would have voted for a rock with the words “anti abortion” written on it.

  78. 78.

    glc

    quordle/globle – pleasant alternatives

    redactle (will take a while, and a bit of an acquired taste)

  79. 79.

    Kevin

    Dang I already played before hearing about this. I actually would have not played today. My streak ended on Saturday anyway so I wouldn’t have cared about ending a whole 4 day streak.

  80. 80.

    Ken

    @Brachiator: They would have voted for a rock with the words “anti abortion” written on it.

    Except in this case the rock had “Pays for abortions. Frequently.” written on it.

  81. 81.

    Zzyzx

    I kind of bent the rules, stayed up until midnight and told myself that I had exactly 1 minute to solve it because I was starting my boycott at 12:01 AM.

  82. 82.

    WaterGirl

    @Zzyzx: :: buzzer sounds ::

    Sorry, on the NYT list, you and Steep are going to count as no change from previous days.

    NYT Union members will be delivering your sackcloth and ashes as you exit.

  83. 83.

    Ruckus

    @Elizabelle:

    It’s the FTFNYT. Once upon a time to read it you had to have a large piece of paper in your hands. Now you can pay a monthly fee and see it on line. The production costs are dramatically less than printing it. And they still do that and sell lots of copies every day. It’s the FTFNYT, the Paper of Record. Like all newspapers they make money by printing/typing/distributing the news of the day. And they cover the market they are mostly interested in, the wealthy NY folks, who make money, moving money around, investing in money. (OK that’s a lot of the billionaires in this world who care about their accounts and not much else, after all it’s rush to be a billionaire and able to purchase homes on 20 acres that measure 20,000 sq ft that you might visit 2 or 3 days a year and purchase an idiot for president so you can grow your accounts and screw over more of those little people. I mean isn’t that the point of life?)

  88. 88.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Alison Rose: Oooh, I’ve started doing Spelling Bee again and it is fun.  But the one I’m really addicted to is Vertex.  But not today.

  89. 89.

    Skepticat

    I’m pretty sure they didn’t notice and wouldn’t care, but I haven’t Wordled since the FNYT took over. I’m a petty b*itch.

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