Twitter Removes Wordle Bot

A bot account was spoiling every day's puzzle.

A bot account was spoiling every day’s puzzle.

Wordle has swiftly become the newest viral social sensation. The simple word game, in which you have six chances to correctly guess a daily five-letter word, has proven to be especially popular, thanks in part to its easily-shareable social format. Many have confessed to playing the daily puzzle and sharing the answer with friends and family as a means of maintaining connection across long distances.

Unfortunately, with popularity always comes detractors. Recently, a Twitter account with the handle @wordlinator had been automatically responding to all tweets with Wordle results. The response would include a passive-aggressive message reading “Guess what. People don’t care about your mediocre linguistic escapades. To teach you a lesson, tomorrow’s word is…,” followed by the solution word for the next day’s puzzle, obtained by checking the game’s source code.

Thankfully, Wordle fans no longer have to worry about this passive-aggressive bot. Earlier in the week, Twitter banned the account from their platform “for violating the Twitter rules and the automation rules around sending unsolicited @mentions.” It is against Twitter’s terms of service to use their platform in a way that deliberately disrupts other users’ usage. It is also prohibited to send large amounts of unsolicited reply tweets, as this practice is akin to cold calling.