Is Karl-Anthony Towns a Wordle fraud? NBA All-Star blames a technical glitch

Spoiler warning: The following article contains the answer for Friday's Wordle puzzle.

There is no game on the internet bigger than Wordle right now.

In the span of a few months, the very straightforward, but undeniably entertaining, game has racked up daily player counts in the millions and inspired a number of memes and knockoffs. The New York Times just purchased the game for a sum said to be in the low seven figures. Celebrities like Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Fry have posted their own scores for the world to see.

That latter facet of the game is responsible for much of its success, as many of its players voluntarily advertise the game with a ready-made social media template that shows their journey to the correct answer.

The game is played by guessing five-letter words while the game tells you which letters are correctly placed with a green block, incorrectly placed with a yellow block and not in the word at all with a grey block. You get six guesses, so the whole thing is a matter of deduction. Once you're done, you can post your pattern of blocks to show off your results, but, crucially, not spoil the daily word for other players.

It's a fun exercise that has become a regular presence in Twitter feeds, including that of Minnesota Timberwolves star Karl-Anthony Towns, whose semi-daily posting of his scores inspired suspicion among some hardcore Wordlers on Friday, eventually leading to a response from the big man himself.

How did Karl-Anthony Towns post this Wordle score?

Before we go any further, we will remind you that we are about to discuss results for Friday's Wordle, so you should stop reading if that was something you were looking forward to doing.

Ready? Good.

The answer for Friday's game was a tricky one: "Ulcer." The hardest part is figuring out that the letter "U" lands in the first slot, but Towns was ostensibly among the fortunate few who immediately guessed that the word not only starts with "U," but ends in "-er."

He missed the second and third letters before guessing the word on his third try, however, and that's where our drama starts. You see, he got a yellow result for his second letter on his second try, which seems to be impossible.

That second letter, which can only be "C," raised eyebrows for a few Wordle fans, who noted that Towns' second guess appeared illegitimate judging by the known words and the fact that Wordle rejects any guesses that aren't in its dictionary.

Go ahead and try to think of any word in the English language that begins with the letters "Uc-" and ends in "-er."

Looking at the possibilities after Towns' first guess, using a word database with the letters "U**er" reveals a list of words that don't come close to fitting the template. They are:

• umber

• upper

• usher

• udder

• ulcer

• under

• urger

• utter

So the second guess in Towns' post was impossible. Did that mean the All-Star center cheated? Well, not necessarily. Does it matter at all in the long run? Absolutely not, but it's still bizarre enough to ponder.

The worst possibility here was that Towns, or his social media team, are indeed frauds. Wordle is extremely popular and people look smart when they guess the word quickly, so they threw together some blocks to look like a Wordle score. That would reflect badly on the star, though on a laughably small scale.

Other distinct possibilities included Towns incorrectly entering his score manually, playing a Wordle knock-off that wouldn't have been using "Ulcer" or a technical glitch.

It's also worth noting that Towns has posted a total of six Wordles since he began playing on Jan. 31. The previous five scores all seem at least possible, but he has solved, or "solved," all six in three words or less, which goes well beyond the realm of skill and firmly into suspicious luck. That could be a matter of selection bias, though, as Towns may only be posting his best-looking results.

Karl-Anthony Towns blames Wordle glitch

Chatter about the issue eventually grew loud enough on Twitter that Towns tried to explain himself.

The way he described it, his Wordle display showed the previous day's puzzle as puzzle No. 237, the answer to which is "Pause." Towns showed a three-guess answer that matched up with his post: "Poise," "Pulse" and "Pause."

In Towns' defense, Friday happened to be the day The New York Times started hosting Wordle on its website. There had been some reports of users' winning streaks being lost in the transition, though seemingly nothing about what Towns is describing. It is, however, conceivable that Towns could have opened the Wordle page on Thursday and solved the "Pause" puzzle a day later via the old website, which did not have the new "Ulcer" puzzle, leading the old site's sharing function to believe he had posted puzzle No. 237.

Towns' post also seemingly confirmed that he was posting only his best Wordle scores, as the game showed he had twice needed five guesses for a word, which he declined to post. And even factoring in those unposted scores, figuring out seven out of nine puzzles in three words or less speaks to an unusual amount of luck.

The explanation doesn't completely exonerate Towns, though it at least provides a theory somewhat more believable than an NBA All-Star feeling insecure enough to fake solutions to a word game.

Either way, Towns' team at least seems to be having fun with it.