Wordle is facing a censorship row after The New York Times removed a series of words in a bid to avoid causing offence.

       The viral word-guessing game, played by millions, was bought by the US media firm in January and players have noticed changes with some five-letter terms no longer accepted.

       Revisions to Wordle’s database have resulted in the sudden omission of many words, some seemingly falling victim because of their British spelling, such as “fibre”.

       Without explanation, some obscure phrases have received the cut such as “agora”, used to describe a gathering place in Ancient Greece and “pupal”, a stage of development for post-larval insects.

       While words associated with racism such as “slave” and “lynch” will no longer feature in the game going forward despite being listed as upcoming solutions. The word “wench”, sometimes used to describe sexual promiscuity, has also been removed.

       The New York Times says while the game itself has remained the same, it has updated its database to root out some “insensitive” words along with sexist, racist and homophobic terms.

       Potentially objectionable words including “s—”, “w—-” and “b—-”, all of which can be used in a derogatory sense towards women, have now been removed.

       But some offensive language will remain on the database, including words that have more than one meaning.

       Several weeks ago the Wordle solution was “p—-” – a word that has several innocent uses but which is also a slang term for male genitalia.

       ‘It was tantamount to blasphemy’

       While players said it was right for some offensive words to be removed from the game, others questioned whether the decision to omit previously accepted terms could result in a backlash.

       Jill Sutcliffe is an administrator on the 41,000-strong Facebook group “Wordle for Fun”. She was puzzled by the removal of “agora”, though she was sympathetic to some level of censorship. “There are clearly some words that might cause distress to some,” she said, “and it’s right they should go”.

       Wordle’s use of a profanity caused a “furore” in the Facebook group, Mrs Sutcliffe recalled.

       “As an ex-nurse,” said Mrs Sutcliffe, a retiree who lives in Fife, “I saw nothing wrong, having used it frequently, as in: ‘Just a little prick now.’ But to some it was tantamount to blasphemy.”

       People will always find fault, said Mrs Sutcliffe, but “I still play [Wordle] daily and love it, despite a little disquiet about The New York Times aspect.”

       Richard Mann, 49, is the creator of Nerdle, an alternative to Wordle that is based on equations rather than words. Mr Mann, whose game is played by more than one million people in 200 countries, was unmoved by the tinkering with the rules of Wordle, but wondered whether too many changes to the game might annoy its users. “It’s fine, isn’t it?,” he said of the bowdlerising.

       “It’s fairly predictable, but it’ll probably backfire.”

       He did not foresee a similar controversy affecting Nerdle. “No one’s going to worry about trying to type in rude equations,” he said, for some reason failing to mention the famously rude numbers 69 and 5318008.

       Jordan Cohen, The New York Times’ executive director of communications, said: “We are updating the word list over time to remove obscure words to keep the puzzle accessible to more people, as well as insensitive or offensive words. No changes have been made to the gameplay itself.”