Ship Saved: the Wordle clue that saved lives

A drowning captain brought to his senses by the viral web based game.

NEWS

Phil Hitchens

2/11/20221 min read

Wordle has captured the hearts and minds of everyone and now it's literally saving lives.

The brutally popular online puzzle Wordle has been credited with keeping friends and families sane amid the turmoil of the pandemic. But now it has been hailed as potentially saving hundreds of lives by providing a clue to a sinking ship.

The captain of a Mediterranean cruise ship, Bruno Maldini, was stuck on 5 letters for a solid hour when the cruise ship carrying 200 passengers struck a large rock off the coast of Cyprus. Oblivious to the damage caused to his bulbous bow, the captain frantically tried a number of unused letters.

In a moment he now describes as “an epiphany”, Maldini desperately entered the word W-A-T-E-R into the web-based word game and, to his delighted surprise, it showed up green. At that same moment, Maldini spun around and noticed that his cabin was filling up with actual water. He quickly alerted the sea based authorities who came to his rescue along with various other passengers.

Maldini claimed that he “normally would have slept after [his] morning Wordle and had the word of the day not been ‘WATER’, [he] probably would have completely missed the rising levels within [his] own cabin”.

Wordle has recently been taken over by the New York Times and users will be delighted to learn that their percentage win score and winning streak will remain unaffected.