Wordle by Wordle: Days 211 & 212
Thursday, Aug 8 & Friday, Aug 9, 2024
Wordle #1146 – SAUCY & Wordle #1147 – OUNCE
I want to say something saucy to introduce the clip, something crowing yet cryptic to really make Bree sweat, but I’m seized by nervous anticipation.
My mouth goes dry—I can’t muster even an ounce of saliva to wet my lips—and the rabbity pulse of my heart beating in my ears drowns out most of the sound of the audio recording. I follow along with the captions on the screen.
Cecilia: “You never even loved Roy in the first place. You murdered him in cold blood because you—”
Bree: “I didn’t murder Roy! It was an accident!”
On-tape Bree is furious, shouting, but in-studio Bree sits cowed in her chair, her eyes wide with disbelief.
“I—I never said that,” Bree says like it’s a question. Like not even she entirely trusts herself.
But she’s right, in a way. She didn’t say that—not exactly.
I had tried my best to reconstruct our conversation word-for-word from that day at Dolores Park, but my memory’s not perfect. And it’s technically not her voice either.
The original recording was too garbled to use as a gotcha, yet it had helped to train a deepfake model to mimic Bree’s voice—along with many more hours of audio from other talk shows and podcasts that Bree had done prior to I Heart Homicide.
So, actually, I have Bree’s own ego to thank for this audio clip. And Kevin’s connections to techy people who can apparently pull off a convincing deepfake murder confession in a few days’ time.
I really do owe Kevin a kidney. Maybe both kidneys.
Need to catch up? Visit the Wordle by Wordle archive to read the story so far.