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by qu1mby 3600 days ago
As I understand it, it is designed to put common misspellings/close-spellings of the three word phrase (eg. cat.mice.dog vs. cat.mice.dogs) in totally different parts of the earth, so that it is immediately obvious on lookup that you have the wrong address.
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Someone shared these on Facebook, 300km distance between Chicago and Gradn Rapids:

https://map.what3words.com/help.driver.lost https://map.what3words.com/driver.lost.help

It's a scam. The media should really stop repeating press releases.

If you mix up words or misspell a place one usually ends up somewhere unplanned. 600km between Springfield, Texas (Jim Wells County) and Springfield, Texas (Anderson County). Half around the world if you mistype a coordinate (or mix up latitude and longitude or forget a minus sign).
Yes, wrong coordinates are much easier to detect. The 300km are too small to be clearly wrong, imagine a package being delivered from the East Coast.