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Wordle answer (Tuesday 16 August 2022): Wordle word of the day #423 and hintsHints and the answer to today’s Wordle word
Hints and the answer to today’s Wordle word
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun

Below we’ll help you out with our carefully curated list of Wordle hints and clues. If that’s not enough, we’ve also laid out today’s Wordle answer below, along with an explanation of the word’s meaning for those who want it.
Looking for today’s solution? Check out theWordle hint and answer for Thursday 26th December!
Wordle August 16 hints
Everyone needs a bit of help every now and then, particularly when you’re struggling with a Wordle and it’s starting to cast a pall of frustration on your morning. To that end, below we’ve listed three helpful hints that will lead you closer to the Wordle answer for today:
Eight Great Wordle-likesLooking for an alternative to Wordle? Here are eight of our favourite Wordle-likes to add to your morning puzzle routine.Watch on YouTube
Eight Great Wordle-likes

Today’s Wordle answer August 16
It’s time to reveal the answer to today’s Wordle. The word is…
GRUEL.
Gruel is a type of food akin to porridge - a thin liquidy food made up of oatmeal (or something similar) boiled in water or milk. If you have even a passing knowledge of the works of Charles Dickens, you’ll likely associate gruel with Oliver Twist, orphans, and poverty in general.
And for those confused about the third hint above - a Grue is a monster from Zork, a text adventure game released way back in 1977, and probably the first famous adventure videogame.
Now make sure you keep today’s Wordle answer to yourself and don’t go spreading it around to friends and family who haven’t yet played the game for themselves, or I’ll send the Grue after 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.
How did Wordle begin?
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 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 isWorldle, in which you must guess a country of the world based on its shape. There’s alsoWaffle, 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; andQuordle, which tasks you with solving four Wordles at once with the same guesses.
Looking for more Wordle guidance? Why not take a look at our list of thebest Wordle starting words, to help get each of your daily Wordle attempts off to the best possible start? You can also check out our archive ofpast Wordle answersto help narrow down the possible answers to a Wordle puzzle.
Use ourWordle Solver toolto help you figure out the answer to any Wordle in moments! Just pop your current guesses in the grid and watch the tool instantly give you all the potential answers.