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WORDLE SAVED THIS WOMAN’S LIFE Jennifer Holt had come to expect an early text every morning with her mother’s Wordle results. She lives in California, while her mother, Denyse Holt, lived in
the family home outside Chicago. Wordle, the popular daily _New York Times _puzzle , had become a fun routine that signaled to Jennifer that her then-80-year-old mother was up and into her
morning routine. When she woke up on a February morning in 2022 without the usual Wordle from her mom, Jennifer thought something was odd. She sent Denyse a text, jokingly asking if she had
fallen into the snow. No answer. Jennifer called her sister Meredith, who lives in Portland: “Have you heard from Mom?” Meredith pinged her mother as well. Still nothing. They didn’t know
that Denyse had been awakened at 1 a.m. by a man standing in her bedroom. He had crashed through a basement window. He was bloody from jumping through the broken glass, naked and wielding a
pair of scissors. “If you talk, if you yell or you scream, I’m going to cut you,” she remembers him saying. Denyse remained surprisingly calm. She assured the man that she would not scream.
He said he would not harm or molest her. But for nearly 21 hours, he held her hostage, locked in a freezing basement bathroom. Alone Denyse thought about others who had survived worse
situations, such as prisoners in concentration camps. She meditated, stretched and tried to move around as much as she could. She lost track of time. Meanwhile, her daughters called a
neighbor to check on their mother. He rang the doorbell, but no one answered. After he told the girls that their mother’s car was in the garage, they called the police and asked for a
welfare check. The neighbor had a key and let the officers into the house. From the basement, Denyse heard her neighbor’s voice and the officers calling out, “Anybody home?” “I’m here! I’m
here! I’m here in the basement!” she shouted. Police found a 32-year-old man in an upstairs bedroom, in the midst of a mental health crisis and armed with knives. With the help of a SWAT
team, he was taken into custody. Not surprisingly, Denyse has moved to a new home. “She’s doing great,” Meredith says. The daily Wordle sharing has expanded to a group text with both
daughters, a close friend and the friend’s son. “I’m thankful for my sister and my mom, that they have this connection,” Meredith says. “It’s like a check-in, you know?” When she sees her
mom’s Wordle results, she knows that all is OK.