[mikeash]

If Wikipedia is to be believed, that's intentional as an error-detecting mechanism:

"The result is that if you enter athree-word combination slightly incorrectly and the result is still a valid w3w reference, the location will be so far away from the user’s intended area that it will be immediately obvious to both a user and an intelligent error-checking system."

I'm skeptical of just how well that'll work, personally. Witness the example of the truck driver who drove to Gibraltar, England instead of the one next to Spain.

[mhurron]

It did say intelligent error checking. People have proven themselves to be idiots.