Wordle puzzle
Wordle puzzle

Wordle players looking for help with Thursday's puzzle have a five-letter word to solve for Aug. 20, 2026, marking game number 1,888 in the New York Times' daily word-guessing franchise. Below are hints for those hoping to solve the puzzle themselves, followed by the full answer for anyone ready to check their work or simply looking to keep a winning streak intact.

Wordle challenges players to guess a five-letter word within six attempts, with the game providing color-coded feedback after each guess: green tiles indicate a correct letter in the correct position, yellow tiles indicate a correct letter in the wrong position, and gray tiles indicate a letter that does not appear in the word at all. The game has remained a fixture of daily online routines since its viral rise in early 2022, prized by fans for its simplicity, its once-a-day format, and the shareable emoji grids players post to compare results without spoiling the actual answer for others.

For those seeking hints before the full reveal, here is what today's puzzle offers. Today's Wordle answer contains just one of the five vowels, meaning players should expect a word built primarily around consonants. There are no repeated letters anywhere in the word, ruling out any double-letter combinations. Additionally, the word features only one of the five most statistically common letters used across the Wordle answer archive, suggesting that popular opening guesses built around high-frequency letters may not yield as many green or yellow squares as usual on the first attempt.

According to the New York Times' own WordleBot tool, which tracks aggregate player performance and calculates optimal solving strategies, the average player completed today's puzzle in 4.3 guesses under the game's standard "easy mode" settings, or 4.2 guesses under the stricter "hard mode" rules, which require players to reuse any previously confirmed correct or partially correct letters in subsequent guesses.

For players still working through the puzzle, one additional descriptive hint: today's word describes something that is difficult to see clearly, evoking a sense of clouded or obscured visibility.

Spoiler warning: The full answer to today's Wordle follows below.

Today's Wordle answer for Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026, puzzle number 1,888, is MURKY.

The word describes something dark, cloudy or difficult to see through clearly, whether referring to murky water, murky lighting or, more figuratively, a murky or unclear situation. The word's single vowel, "U," combined with the relatively uncommon consonants "M," "R," "K" and "Y," likely made the puzzle somewhat more challenging than average for players who opened with guesses heavily weighted toward the game's most frequently appearing letters, such as "E," "A," "R," "O" and "T."

Yesterday's Wordle answer, for puzzle number 1,887 on Aug. 19, was GRILL. According to recap coverage of that puzzle, the double "L" made it a somewhat tricky solve for some players, even though the word's other letters, "R," "I" and "L," rank among the seven most commonly used letters across the full Wordle answer archive. Only one of those three letters, however, ranks within the top five most common letters overall, which meant that a popular opening guess such as "ORATE" would have revealed just a single green "R" on the first attempt, according to WordleBot's analysis of the puzzle.

WordleBot's data also offered insight into which opening words performed most efficiently against Wednesday's "GRILL" answer specifically. According to the tool's calculations, an opening guess of "CLIPS" would have narrowed the field to 28 possible remaining answers, while "TAILS" would have reduced the pool further to just 17 options. An opener of "TRAIL" proved even more efficient against that particular puzzle, narrowing the possibilities down to just four remaining candidate words after a single guess.

For players looking to improve their overall Wordle strategy going forward, puzzle experts commonly recommend starting with words that contain a strong mix of frequently used vowels and consonants, since doing so maximizes the amount of information gained from the very first guess, regardless of what the day's specific answer turns out to be. Commonly recommended letters to prioritize across opening guesses include "S," "T," "R," "N," "L," "C" and the vowels "A," "E," "I," and "O," given their statistically high frequency across the full range of five-letter words used in the Wordle answer database.

Wordle has continued to draw a dedicated daily audience despite now being several years removed from its initial 2022 viral breakout, when the game rapidly spread across social media as players shared their daily results using the now-familiar green, yellow and gray emoji grid format. The New York Times acquired the game from its original creator, software engineer Josh Wardle, shortly after it first gained widespread popularity, and has continued operating it as a free daily puzzle within its broader suite of games, which also includes Connections, the Mini Crossword and other daily word and logic puzzles.

For players who missed today's puzzle or are looking to track their performance over time, Wordle resets at midnight local time each day, meaning the same puzzle and answer apply to all players regardless of time zone, though the exact moment a new puzzle becomes available will vary depending on where a given player is located relative to their own local midnight.

Players hoping to avoid spoilers for future puzzles are generally advised to be cautious when browsing daily hint and answer coverage, since many outlets, including this one, structure their coverage with hints presented first and the full answer revealed only after an explicit spoiler warning, allowing readers to stop reading at whatever point suits their own preference for either solving independently or checking their work against the confirmed daily solution.

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