Swifties scrambled to decipher the hidden messages in the clip.
Taylor Swift sent her Swiftie sleuths into overdrive on Thursday morning (August 5) when she released a cryptic 30-second video teaser filled with a series of 13-letter word jumbles floating out of a gilded safe amid swirling copper-colored leaves. The message accompanying the tweet was similarly packed with wink-wink, nudge-nudge clues that will likely be quickly deciphered by the singer’s legendarily detail-oriented superfans.
“*presses post* *cackles maniacally* Level: casually cruel in the name of being honest,” Swift wrote above the clip featuring such seemingly nonsense phrases as: “MEBRIDGERSKOE,” “NOTELPATSIEEV” and “EAIEURLTSBETT.” Billboard recently confirmed that the heart-wrenching song “Ronan,” chronicling a child’s battle with cancer, will be featured on the upcoming re-recorded 30-track version of Red, which is due out on Nov. 19.
It didn’t take long for Swifties to start pulling out some potential clues from the word salad, including teasing out what appeared to be the name of singer Phoebe Bridgers, as well as the words “Ronan,” “nights,” “you,” “better man,” “winner,” “bottle,” “forever,” “nothing,” “message” and “stones,” with many guessing that the jumbles are part of a crossword puzzle.
Check out Swift’s teaser and the Swiftie guesses below.
ive decided it’s a crossword and have found better man, zyn (zayn??), ronan and phoebe bridgers so far pic.twitter.com/3602zmdFMB
— rose (@newrommantics) August 5, 2021
I see "Forever" spelled backwards in the first one, then "Ronan" in the second one, also saw "Nights" and "You"
— luca (@chromaticariana) August 5, 2021
this is how far I got pic.twitter.com/Ak2LRU97tR
— annie 🧣🧣🧣🧣 (Taylor's Version) (@fearlessstyle13) August 5, 2021
ok here we go this is all the words in it
— Jelle Verbeek (@jelleverbeek) August 5, 2021
Forever
Nothing
Babe
About
Bottle
Message
As
New
Winter
First
Very
Stones
Better
You
night(s)
It
Note
Hurt
feat. Phoebe bridgers
feat. ed sheeran
feat. Chris Stapleton
All too wel (Ten Minute version)