Missing Wordle update sees kidnapped woman rescued
<p dir="ltr">The wildly popular web-based word game Wordle has helped rescue an 80-year-old woman from an alleged kidnapping.</p><p dir="ltr">Chicago woman Denyse Holt was asleep in her home on Saturday when a naked, mentally ill man allegedly broke into her home and held her hostage for 17 hours, as reported by the <em><a href="https://nypost.com/2022/02/10/chicago-woman-rescued-from-naked-kidnapper-thanks-to-wordle/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">New York Post</a></em>.</p><p dir="ltr">The key to her rescue came after she didn’t text her daughter with her daily Wordle answers, prompting her daughter to call the police, <a href="https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2022/02/08/man-charged-knapping-home-incolnwood/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WBBM-TV reported</a>.</p><p dir="ltr">The intruder - identified as 32-year-old James H Davis III - was bloodied from a broken window and reportedly slipped into Ms Holt’s bed while holding a pair of scissors.</p><p dir="ltr">“I was in shock,” Ms Holt said, recalling that she tried to stay calm during the ordeal.</p><p dir="ltr">“I was trying to survive, that’s all. He said, ‘I won’t harm you or molest you’.”</p><p dir="ltr">After ordering her to take a shower with him in her nightgown, she recalled that he changed his mind.</p><p dir="ltr">“He said, ‘No, I’m not warm enough. We have to take a bath’,” she said.</p><p dir="ltr">Following the bath, she said Mr Davis dragged her around the house, disconnected the phones, took several knives from the kitchen, and took her into a bathroom in the basement, which he blocked with a chair.</p><p dir="ltr">“I didn’t think I was going to live. I was doing marching and stretching as much as I could,” she recounted.</p><p dir="ltr">Eventually, Ms Holt’s daughter Meredith Holt-Caldwell noticed that her mother hadn’t sent her a message about the word-logic puzzle as she usually would.</p><p><span id="docs-internal-guid-8c4ead01-7fff-5226-324a-c0c52961fee9"></span></p><p dir="ltr">“I didn’t send my older daughter a Wordle in the morning - and that was disconcerting to her,” Ms Holt said.</p><p dir="ltr"><img src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/2022/02/wordle-kidnapping1.jpg" alt="" width="1280" height="720" /></p><p dir="ltr"><em>Denyse Holt’s daughter Meredith realised something was amiss when her mother didn’t send her an update about the word-logic game Wordle. Image: CBS Chicago</em></p><p dir="ltr">After the family called police, officers arrived at Ms Holt’s home at about 9.40pm on Sunday.</p><p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-34ead5ae-7fff-6c00-89ff-bad1804d768b"></span></p><p dir="ltr">Members of a SWAT team were able to overpower the man using a stun gun following an hours-long standoff.</p><p dir="ltr"><img src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/2022/02/wordle-kidnapping2.jpg" alt="" width="1280" height="720" /></p><p dir="ltr"><em>The man was eventually overpowered by SWAT and police with a stun gun. Image: CBS Chicago</em></p><p dir="ltr">“I never thought in a million years this is what was happening, but it was,” Ms Holt-Caldwell told WBBM.</p><p dir="ltr">Mr Davis was later hit with several charges, including home invasion with a dangerous weapon, aggravated kidnapping while armed with a dangerous weapon and aggravated assault against a peace officer.</p><p dir="ltr">“I’m very lucky,” said Ms Holt, who was physically unharmed from the ordeal.</p><p dir="ltr">Wordle, the online word-logic game developed by software engineer Josh Wardle, has become a viral trend among English-language puzzlers.</p><p dir="ltr">Players are required to guess a five-word letter, which changes each day, in just six attempts, using letters on the board as clues.</p><p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-a5bb4ce0-7fff-8e56-ea87-f7a04b41104b"></span></p><p dir="ltr"><em>Images: CBS Chicago, Getty Images</em></p>
