The Wordle answer for Saturday, July 18, 2026, is BOOTH. Today’s game is puzzle #1855.
Three hints before the answer, for solvers who want another pass at it first.
Hint 1: The word contains two consecutive identical vowels in positions two and three. If your starting word hasn’t revealed any O’s yet, try one that does.
Hint 2: It’s a noun with several unrelated everyday uses – one involves casting a ballot, one involves ordering at a diner, and one has largely disappeared from city streets since the smartphone era.
Hint 3: The surname of the man who shot Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865.
The answer is BOOTH.
BOOTH is a concrete noun that covers several distinct but structurally similar concepts: a small enclosed or semi-enclosed space designed for a specific purpose. The voting booth is where Americans cast ballots in private. The telephone booth – a glass-and-steel enclosure housing a payphone – was once a fixture of city streets and is now largely a relic. The restaurant booth is the padded bench seating arrangement set along walls or dividers. Trade show and market booths are temporary stalls. What connects them is the same idea: a defined, bounded space carved out of a larger environment for a focused activity.
John Wilkes Booth is the name of the most famous historical character. A stage actor and Confederate sympathizer, Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on the evening of April 14, 1865, while Lincoln watched a performance of Our American Cousin. Lincoln died the following morning. Booth fled but was tracked down and killed twelve days later at a farm in Virginia. The word BOOTH predates him by centuries – it derives from a Scandinavian root meaning a temporary shelter – but solvers who reach for the history connection tend to land on the answer quickly.
On strategy: the double-O pattern (B-O-O-T-H) is one Wordle returns to regularly. Once you confirm an O in position two or three, probing the adjacent position for a second O is a productive move. Common traps before BOOTH resolves: BOOTS (swap the H for S), BOONS (swap T for N), and BOOZE (swap T and H for Z and E). The opening B also trims the candidate list significantly, since B is one of the less common first letters in the Wordle answer pool.
The NYT Spelling Bee answers for July 17, 2026 – center letter U, pangram ALBUMEN – are live. The Contexto #1398 answer for July 17 is ICON. Wordle resets at midnight ET.
