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Comment by tomlockwood | Hacker News Reader

I think it's chosen based on a random number generated from the date - but one of the most recent games had the answer "REBUS", which I've never heard or read before. But yeah, the target list has many more common words in it than the list of all possible guesses.

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I am pretty sure the list is sequential. If you look at the list in the Javascript code of the game and Ctrl-F today's word, you'll see the previous dates' words are right before it. Here's tomorrow's word (spoiler alert, obv): https://pastebin.com/sfQ7x5ya

That is not an uncommon word though, I'd venture most school children know it. You probably read rebuses in school but just forgot about it!

It's a common word? What's your source for that claim?

Kindergarten? https://kidpillar.com/free-rebus-puzzles-for-kids/

This website looks like it's target audience is five year olds, to you?

It was just a random google result, but we definitely did rebuses in pre-school at least.

The rebus concept is actually a precursor to actual writing, historically speaking. Both in Mesopotamia/Egypt and in the Chinese civilisation, writing developed through a rebus phase. So it's a very natural thing, that's why it's so child friendly.

That's all cool, why's it a common word, though?

Why? I mean most pre-schoolers probably play with rebuses, simple crosswords etc. It's just a common concept in the world that most people have come across.

Unlike say an obscure linguistic term like nisba.

Oh I get that they exist, commonly, I just see no evidence to suggest the word is common.

For the creator of Wordle and their partner, who obviously have some love of word puzzles, REBUS (a picture to word puzzle) would be a familiar word.

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