80-Year-Old Woman Escapes Naked Kidnapper Thanks To 'Wordle'

An 80-year-old grandmother was able to escape a truly horrifying ordeal with the help of the popular daily word game, Wordle.

Created as a free-to-play puzzle game that could be enjoyed by everyone, Wordle has absolutely blown up in the last few weeks. Friends and family will often eagerly share their scores, and discuss how quickly they were able to solve the day's word.

Josh Wardle

It's precisely because of this that Denyse Holt managed to get out of a 17-hour hostage situation. CBS reports that police were alerted to Ms Holt's situation when her daughter grew concerned that she'd failed to send over her Wordle solution for the day.

It turns out that Ms Holt was the victim of a terrifying home invasion. While asleep at her home in Chicago, Illinois, a man broke into the house by smashing a window. Ms Holt was woken up to find the man standing over her bleeding, naked and pointing a pair of scissors at her.

The man allegedly climbed into bed with Ms Holt, apparently saying he had no intention of harming her. He then took her around the house as he disconnected phone lines and took knives from the kitchen, eventually forcing her to take a bath with him.

After the bath, the man locked Ms Holt in a basement bathroom. She was trapped in there for 17 hours.

"I didn't think I was going to live," she told CBS. "I was in shock. I was trying to survive."

Ms Holt's daughter Meredith Holt-Caldwell, who lives in Seattle, started to suspect something was wrong when her mother didn't get in touch to talk about that day's Wordle. Ms Holt-Caldwell explained that her mother had never missed a day of Wordle, and asked police to check on the wellbeing of her elderly parent.

Upon arriving at Ms Holt's house, police engaged in a tense standoff with the intruder that ended with a SWAT team taking him into custody. Ms Holt was found in the basement room, seemingly physically unharmed.

"I'm across the country and I noticed this," said Ms Holt-Caldwell. "I never thought in a million years that this is what was happening, but it was."

"I didn't send my older daughter a Wordle in the morning and this was disconcerting to her," Ms Holt added.

The suspect, later named as 32-year-old James H. Davis III, is now facing a number of felony charges including home invasion with a deadly weapon, aggravated kidnapping, and assault against a peace officer.