Slave not allowed as word on Wordle

SafeSurfer · 17-02-2022 11:31am #1

Just noticed that the word “slave” is not allowed as a word on Wordle.

Someone had to go to the trouble to ban this word as illegitimate. What other words are considered verboten in todays climate?

ohnonotgmail · 17-02-2022 11:48am

they removed these 6 words from the list of possible answers

agora

pupal

lynch

fibre

slave

wench

and these words from the list of allowed words

bitch

chink

coons

darky

dyked

dykes

dykey

faggy

fagot

gooks

homos

kikes

lesbo

pussy

sluts

spick

spics

spiks

whore

[Deleted User] · 17-02-2022 12:12pm

Thrall

chattel

bondsman

helot

"apprentice"

Creamy Goodness · 17-02-2022 12:15pm

seen interviews with the guy who created the game, there's like 13,000 possible 5-letter words, he then created a game for his wife that gave her a word with three buttons "I know this word", "I think I've heard this word" and "I don't know this word" from that he whittle the list of 13,000 to 2,500 and then further removed words he didn't want. Anyways it's just a game you either play it or move on with your life :pac:

Brussels Sprout · 17-02-2022 12:25pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118645578#Comment_118645578

Most of those words in the spoiler are not dictionary words so it makes sense that they wouldn't be acceptable as guesses

wanderer 22 · 17-02-2022 12:27pm

Chink also - as in a 'chink in the armour'

ohnonotgmail · 17-02-2022 12:29pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118645783#Comment_118645783

that is not the reason they were removed.

Snickers Man · 17-02-2022 12:48pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118645712#Comment_118645712

Well that may have been its origin but seeing as it is played aroudn the world, was bought by one of America's leading media companies the New York Times for a sum in the millions of dollars the omission of a perfectly legitimate and well known word is ridiculous. Maybe we now have to call it "The 'S' Word"?

Yes, it describes a horrible feature of humanity, the diminution of one person to be the property of another. But then there's other legitimate words that describe horrible things. Like nasty diseases. Gonorrhea is horrible. So is syphilis, and diphtheria and typhoid and leprosy. But if you had one of those things wouldn't you want your doctor to tell you exactly what it was, or have them say "Oh dear. You have a case of Ghastly Frightfulness, but it could be worse. It might have been "Yucky Yucky" or "God is Cross with you" or even "Don't Come Near Me". (That last one is Covid, obviously)

If we don't say the word it will all go away. 🙄

Brussels Sprout · 17-02-2022 1:08pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118645802#Comment_118645802

Do you have proof that those specific words were "removed". It stands to reason that they were never there in the first place since they're not actually words but slang. (Not to mention that quite a lot of them are plurals and Wordle doesn't do plural words)

SafeSurfer · 17-02-2022 1:35pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118646013#Comment_118646013

Slang words are in the dictionary.

Could you define what an “actual word” is?

SafeSurfer · 17-02-2022 1:40pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118645712#Comment_118645712

“It’s just a game you either play it or move on with your life”. ?

The rules of Wordle aren’t preventing me from “moving on with my life”. Any more than the rules of soccer, tennis or tiddlywinks.

Do you suggest a ban on discussing the idiosyncrasies of other games too or only Wordle?

Badly Drunk Boy · 17-02-2022 1:43pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118646177#Comment_118646177

But not all 5-letter dictionary words were in the Wordle pool of 5-letter words. And that pool may have been reduced further.

magicbastarder · 17-02-2022 1:43pm

master/slave in computing is being abandoned. and blacklist/whitelist has moved to block list/allow list.

joseywhales · 17-02-2022 1:43pm

I seem to remember a certain Bilbo Baggins tossing a couple of faggots on the fire, to keep the baddies away at night.

Creamy Goodness · 17-02-2022 1:44pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118646211#Comment_118646211

No of course not, but it's hardly worth spending time debating whether a certain word should be included in a game or not on an Internet forum. Language changes and evolves all the time. Anyways I assume this will go around around in circles so I'll bow it

ohnonotgmail · 17-02-2022 1:45pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118646013#Comment_118646013

I do. I extracted the list of words from the original and NYT versions and did a comparison. the words are all in the javascript on the page. there are 2309 possible answers in the NYT version and a further 10638 allowed words.

Not to mention that quite a lot of them are plurals and Wordle doesn't do plural words

I have no idea where you got this from. It just isn't true. looking through the list there are 3914 words ending in S in the allowed list. not all of them are plurals but quite a number are.

Brussels Sprout · 17-02-2022 1:50pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118646177#Comment_118646177

It depends on the dictionary. Online dictionaries may have them since they cover all sorts of vernacular these days.

Ok, for the purposes of a game like Wordle, anything that you'd find in a small pocket dictionary.

Do you really want to die on the hill that "lesbos", "spics", "gooks", "darky" and "kikes" should be acceptable guesses in Wordle? Such a weird thing to get hung up about.

SafeSurfer · 17-02-2022 1:55pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118646244#Comment_118646244

That’s your opinion. However if a word, for example “trans” was forbidden on Wordle there would probably be media reports about it, questions in parliament and ultimately a cancellation of the game. I say that only slightly tongue in cheek.

ohnonotgmail · 17-02-2022 1:58pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118646272#Comment_118646272

Wordle uses its own internal dictionary of words.

joseywhales · 17-02-2022 2:16pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118646230#Comment_118646230

Is it really being abandoned though? For example my whole team still refers to slave processes when talking about processes that simply receive commands and execute from a main or master process that load balances the commands. Never has anyone questioned the usage because really it's our business how we want to internally organize or label, the client does not micro manage details. I would suspect the term will exist for decades to come in code everywhere(nevermind the fact that there are banks out there still running 40 year old cobol code and other artifact applications). Now the term has been missused, for example when talking about a database with a high availability backup or secondary process, slave is an incorrect term, really you are talking about a backup master there. A slave has no context, it receives command and executes as part of a simple parallelization model.

SafeSurfer · 17-02-2022 3:08pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118646272#Comment_118646272

You have said that these words aren’t allowed because they aren’t “actual words” then claimed plurals weren’t allowed in Wordle, both of which are untrue.

You seem to confuse “dying on a hill” with discussing something on a discussion board.

I am curious if the word slave is now considered taboo.

I am curious about the process of words becoming taboo because I believe that controlling language is a means of controlling thought and controlling thought, however subtly is something we should be concerned about.

17-02-2022 4:02pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118646895#Comment_118646895

It's not exactly hard to understand why certain words often get avoided. Cause people have literally used them either in an effort to demean or they just have pretty uncomfortable connotations with the history of their use. Slave I'd be on fence about removing but ultimately no biggy to me. The rest of the terms are pretty atrocious.

Scrabble also has a list of banned words. The vast majority don't care.

Quantum Erasure · 17-02-2022 5:57pm

try SALVE

🟩🟨🟨🟩🟩

SafeSurfer · 17-02-2022 6:30pm

Yes, Scrabble banned some words in 2020 including Fenian as a knee jerk reaction to BLM protests.

As a previous poster stated, language is constantly evolving. Words that were considered offensive in the past such as belly, hell or damn are no longer considered offensive.

However for almost 100 years no words were banned in Scrabble. If it was in the dictionary it was allowed. Even if it was offensive.

Our grandparents living in repressive, Catholic Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s had more freedom in use of language than we enjoy today.