A missing game of Wordle helps end a 17-hour hostage ordeal
A missing game of Wordle helps end a 17-hour hostage ordeal
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Family members were alarmed when 80-year-old Denyse **** failed to send in her daily Wordle
A Chicago grandmother was rescued from a 17-hour hostage ordeal after police were alerted for the unlikeliest of reasons: a missing solution to the day's Wordle challenge
According to Ms ****, she was asleep in bed in Chicago's Lincolnwood area when 32-year-old James H. Davis III entered her home and pointed a pair of scissors at her. He was naked and bleeding after being cut by window shards while entering the ho
use.
"I didn't think I was going to live," she told CBS. "I was in shock. I was trying to survive."
While Mr Davis told her he wouldn't harm her, he did force her - still wearing a nightgown - to take a warm bath with him before taking two knives from the kitchen, disconnecting phones, and locking her in a cold basement bathroom.
Across the country in Seattle, Ms ****'s daughter, Meredith ****-Caldwell, soon noticed that her mother wasn't responding to text messages and hadn't sent in her Wordle, a popular daily word puzzle.
"That was disconcerting to her," Ms **** said, because her daughter knew that this was a routine she never missed.
Alarmed, Ms ****-Caldwell alerted police, who conducted a well-being check at her home on 6 February. A stand-off with Mr Davis ensued, ending only when a police SWAT team used a stun gun to subdue him and take him into custody.
Police say that Mr Davis now faces a range of felony charges, including home invasion with a deadly weapon, aggravated kidnapping, and assault against a peace officer.
Ms **** was unharmed during the incident.
"I never thought in a million years this is what was happening, but it was," she said. "I'm very lucky".
Wordle, which was purchased by the New York Times for an undisclosed seven-figure sum in January, gives players six attempts to guess a hidden five-letter word each day
