The game consists of guessing one five letter word a day in just six attempts. (File)
Washington:
A woman in the US city of Chicago was rescued from hours of hostage-taking after she failed to share her daily Wordle score and warned her family that something was wrong.
Denyse Holt, 80, was home alone on the night of Feb. 5 when a man broke into her house and pointed a pair of scissors at her.
The man – identified as James H Davis III, aged 32 – was naked and covered in cuts and blood after breaking a window to gain entry.
Police suspect Davis is suffering from a mental illness.
Holt said Davis assured her he would not harm her, but he forced her, fully clothed, to take a bath with him before locking her in the basement.
“I didn’t think I was going to live,” she told the local CBS station.
Holt’s oldest daughter, Meredith Holt-Caldwell, who lives in Seattle, first noticed that something wasn’t right when her mother didn’t send her daily Wordle score.
The game consists of guessing one five letter word a day in just six attempts. Its popularity has skyrocketed since the beginning of the year, with millions of people playing it daily.
Holt said her missing score was “disturbing” to Holt-Caldwell, who knew her mother never missed this part of their daily routine.
Holt-Caldwell called the Chicago Police Department, who conducted a welfare check on her mother on Feb. 6, to discover that she was being held hostage in her own home.
An hour-long standoff between the police and Davis ensued. SWAT officers ended up using a stun gun to take him out and save Holt.
Police say Davis faces a range of charges, including home invasion with a deadly weapon and aggravated kidnapping.
Holt was in shock after her rescue, but otherwise unharmed.
“I wouldn’t have thought this was what was happening in a million years, but it was,” she told CBS. “I’m very lucky.”
DailyExpertNews announced in late January that it had bought Wordle for an “undisclosed price in the low seven digits”.
Other versions of the game have emerged around the world, in languages ranging from German to Urdu.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)
