This is correct. They will A/B test titles AND update the title w/o warning over time, often 3-6 times per article post publication.

They used to change the URL a bunch of times after publication! Seems crazy because it is but they did. Caused a whole problem on Wikipedia because “title + day + work + url” suddenly wasn’t stable.

You can see https://bsky.app/profile/nytdiff.bsky.social for some examples of how the NYT frequently revises titles and abstracts after publication. Most of them seem harmless at least.

They A/B test titles. You can see it in the URL, where the recessive title often lives on. They may also use different titles for print/digital.