Time to re-evaluate your five-letter vocabulary: the New York Times is changing its Wordle rules.

As Polygon (opens in new tab) reports, the daily word puzzler will have a dedicated editor, and several rules will change as a result. For the most part, the newspaper has maintained this formula since January, when it acquired Wordle from its original creator, Josh Wardle (opens in new tab), for a seven-figure sum. As far as we know, the word pool has not changed, but even so, there is no shortage of people who theorize that the NYT has made the game more difficult since the acquisition.

Now, as noted in a NYT blog post (opens in new tab), things are changing. Former crossword editor Tracy Bennett will be Wordle's first resident editor; the core gameplay of guessing a five-letter word in six attempts will remain the same, and the answers will be "drawn from the same basic answer word dictionary," but "the game will be fun, friendly, lively, and varied Some editorial adjustments" will be made "to ensure that the game is fun, friendly, lively, and focused on vocabulary.

What this means is that "we will say goodbye to simple plurals. Plurals of three- or four-letter words ending in 'es' or 's'" will be removed from the six-year-old list of responses originally curated by Wardle himself with his partner Palak Shah; irregular plurals such as "Geese" and "Fungi" will still remain.

Thankfully, simpler plurals can still be used for guessing, but no longer as answers. The post continues, "While the answer list is curated, a much larger dictionary of English words that are valid guesses is not curated." It is the personal choice of the answerer which words they use as guesses." The NYT appears to have lifted the ban on offensive words that was implemented when the game first moved to the site.

From an overall perspective, this change is a small one, but having a "programmed and tested" word list and a dedicated editor, like other NYT puzzles, should give Wordle some longevity. If not, one can play with countless other Worlde-like (open in new tab) ...