The puzzle of August 22, 2026

This was the TrifectaWord daily puzzle for August 22, 2026 — the same one every player in the world was given that day. It ran at a difficulty of hard, and its final word is 4 letters long.

Each of the three columns below hid one answer, and started out showing only its first clue word; the second and third clue words were revealed a letter at a time as players guessed wrong. The three answers were themselves the clues to a single final word that connects all of them. If that structure is new to you, the how to play guide explains it properly.

The clues

These are the three clue words each column revealed, in the order players saw them.

Column 1

Bottom · Heel · Foot

Column 2

Worm · Sea · Fillet

Column 3

Single · Unique · Lone

Answers

This day is over and its puzzle is no longer playable, so the answers are below. They are folded away in case you arrived here from a search while a friend is still working on it.

Show the answers for August 22, 2026

Column answers

  • Shoe — from Bottom, Heel and Foot.
  • Fish — from Worm, Sea and Fillet.
  • Only — from Single, Unique and Lone.

The connecting word

The word linking Shoe, Fish and Only is Sole.

What a perfect run was worth

A column pays most when it is solved from its first clue alone, and every letter of clue words 2 and 3 you never needed adds to it. Because those clue words differ from day to day, so does the ceiling. On this puzzle it was:

That is a theoretical maximum of 3250 points, which assumes three cold first-guess column solves, no hints and no wrong answers. The how to play guide works through where each of those numbers comes from.

Nearby puzzles

Play today's puzzle

A new TrifectaWord puzzle goes live every day at midnight UTC. It is free, it runs in the browser, and you can start without an account. Play today's puzzle, or browse the rest of the puzzle archive.