Looking for the Wordle answer for Saturday 20 August 2022? In Wordle we trust! In an extremely volatile year, few little comforts have been as reliable as good old Wordle, the word puzzle game that’s never missed its daily appointment with players all over the English-speaking world. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Wordle is always easy to solve. If you’re having some trouble getting today’s answer, read on below for a few quick clues, or scroll down below the video for a spoiler-filled definition of today’s Wordle word.
Wordle August 20 hints
Having a bit of trouble arriving at the Wordle answer today? Here are a few clues to help you along:
- This word starts and ends with the same letter.
- This word contains two vowels.
- It can be either a noun or a verb, and is often used to mean something rare but pleasant.
Today’s Wordle answer August 20
It’s time to reveal the answer to today’s Wordle. The word is…
TREAT.
When used as a noun, “treat” means an out-of-the-ordinary occurrence that is pleasant for the recipient and often a surprise or gift. And of course you can treat (verb) someone to a lovely treat (noun). In the verb form the word is a little more versatile though, and it’s not always so nice: medical treatment is usually not nearly so enjoyable as being treated to a day out at the seaside, and treating your laundry with pre-wash formula before sticking it in the machine is a chore at best. Treat can also be used to describe a mode of behaviour, and it’s important to always treat others with kindness, as in the following example: please be kind to other Wordle players and don’t share spoilers for today’s solution until tomorrow. Thank you!
How to play Wordle
Wordle is a very straightforward word guessing game. The aim is to guess the correct five-letter word in just six guesses. With each guess, the individual letters of your chosen word will highlight green if they’re in the correct place, or yellow if they’re in the wrong place. If a letter doesn’t appear in the solution word at all, it’ll remain unhighlighted.
Using these clues you can start to narrow down the correct word by figuring out which letters are included in the word and in which positions they belong. Head over to the Wordle site to try it for yourself. Just remember: there’s only one Wordle puzzle released per day, so if you want to play again, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow.
How did Wordle begin?
Wordle began life as a little family game created by software engineer Josh Wardle. He created the game so that he and his partner could play a fun little word game together during the pandemic, and they quickly realised that there was something quite special in this simple little guessing game. So after a bit of refinement, Wardle released it to the public on his website, Power Language.
The game was released in October 2021, and by the end of the year the game had two million daily players. It became a viral hit, thanks in large part to the ease with which players could share their results in a spoiler-free manner on Twitter and other social media sites. In January 2022, Wardle accepted an offer form the New York Times to acquire Wordle for a seven-figure sum. Well done, Mr Wardle. Well done indeed.
Are any Wordle words not allowed?
You can type in pretty much any five-letter word in the English language and Wordle will accept it as a guess. However, the answer is picked each day from a much smaller list of more common five-letter words. There are still thousands of possible answers, of course, but it means the answer will never be a word as obscure as, say, “THIOL”, or “CAIRD”, or “MALIC” (yes, those are all real words).
There are very occasional words which the New York Times will choose not to publish as the day’s Wordle answer, perhaps for reasons relating to recent news or politics. For example, shortly after news broke that Roe v Wade might be overturned in the United States, the NYT decided to change the March 30th word from “FETUS” to “SHINE”, as the feeling was that the word “fetus” was too politically charged a word in the context of recent events.
The New York Times has also been careful never to allow what they consider to be rude words as the answer to a Wordle puzzle. But of course there’s nothing stopping you from using even the dirtiest of words as guesses, as long as they’re accepted words in the dictionary, and as long as you realise that they’ll never end up being the answer.
Is Wordle getting too easy for you?
If Wordle is starting to get too easy, there are a few ways you can make the game more challenging for yourself. The first choice is to turn on Hard Mode. You can do this on the Wordle site by clicking the cog icon in the top-right of the screen. Hard Mode means that any highlighted letters must be used in all future guesses. This stops you from using the common tactic of choosing two words like “OUNCE” and “PAINS” to test all five vowels early on.
You can take it up another notch by playing by what we call “Ultra-Hard” rules. This means that every guess you enter must potentially be the answer. If you were just playing on Hard Mode, and you typed “MOIST”, and the “O” appeared yellow, then nothing would stop you from making “POLAR” as your next word, even though it couldn’t possibly be the answer because you already know the “O” is in the wrong place. If you play by “Ultra-Hard” rules, that’s not allowed. You must adhere to every clue, and make sure every single word you enter is potentially the answer.
If after all that Wordle is still too easy for you, then you could always try one of the many other Wordle-inspired games online that have cropped up over the past year. One of our favourites is Worldle, in which you must guess a country of the world based on its shape. There’s also Waffle, which is about swapping letters in a completed grid to complete all the words; Moviedle, which shows you an entire movie in a tiny space of time and challenges you to guess the movie within six guesses; and Quordle, which tasks you with solving four Wordles at once with the same guesses.
If you’re looking to reduce the number of average guesses it takes you to puzzle out the daily Wordle answer, be sure to have a look at our guide to the best Wordle starting words. We’ve also got a thorough list of past Wordle answers if you’re curious and like very long word lists.
