Today’s NYT Spelling Bee for Saturday, August 15, 2026 has O as the center letter. The outer letters are A, C, D, H, I, and R. There is one pangram: RADICCHIO. The puzzle has 47 valid answers, ranging from four to nine letters.
NYT Spelling Bee Hints – August 15, 2026
Three hints for players still working through today’s hive.
Today’s only pangram is a loanword from Italian, the name of a leafy vegetable with deep red and white leaves used in winter salads and risotto. It contains a double-C followed by HI, a spelling that catches many solvers off guard even after they have sounded it out correctly. Look for nine letters using all seven of today’s letters.
The center letter O must appear in every valid word. Many of today’s answers contain O twice or three times: ROCOCO uses it three times; CORRIDOR, HORROR, HOODOO, and DOODAD each use it twice. If you are stuck, run through short combinations ending in -OOR, -OOD, and -OAD before moving up in word length.
Three vocabulary areas pay off well today: Greek mythology (a 5-letter word for the fluid that flows in gods’ veins instead of blood), botany (two separate words for the same chocolate plant in its raw and processed forms), and European art history (a 6-letter word naming the 18th-century decorative style built on extravagant ornamentation and asymmetrical curves).
NYT Spelling Bee Answers – August 15, 2026
Here is the complete answer list for today’s NYT Spelling Bee, organized by word length. The pangram is marked with a star (★).
4 letters (18): ARCO, CIAO, COCA, CODA, COHO, COIR, CORD, CROC, DODO, DOOR, HOAR, HOOD, HORA, ODOR, ORCA, ROAD, ROAR, ROOD
5 letters (15): ACHOO, ARDOR, CACAO, CHOIR, CHORD, COACH, COCCI, COCOA, CROCI, DROID, HOARD, HOOCH, ICHOR, RADIO, ROACH
6 letters (12): ACCORD, CARDIO, CHADOR, DOODAD, DORADO, HAIRDO, HOODOO, HOORAH, HORRID, HORROR, ORCHID, ROCOCO
7 letters (3): COCHAIR, CORRIDA, ORCHARD
8 letters (2): CARDIOID, CORRIDOR
9 letters (1): RADICCHIO ★
RADICCHIO is an Italian loanword, borrowed into English from the Venetian dialect. It traces to the Latin radiculum, a diminutive of radix meaning root. The plant belongs to the chicory family and is grown most famously in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy; its characteristic bitterness comes from a compound called lactucopicrin. The doubled letters in RADICCHIO (CC and II) make it a reliable blocker in Spelling Bee: solvers who reach R-A-D-I-C-H-I-O through sounding it out often omit the second C until the scoring screen confirms the error.
CARDIOID names a heart-shaped mathematical curve generated by tracing a fixed point on a circle as it rolls around another circle of equal radius. CORRIDA is the Spanish and French term for a bullfight (from corrida de toros, running of the bulls) and is accepted in most major English dictionaries. ROCOCO names the 18th-century European decorative style characterized by asymmetrical ornamentation, pastel palettes, and shell-and-scroll motifs; the word is formed from the French rocaille (rockwork) and coquille (shell), and today’s ROCOCO is built from only three distinct letters: R, O, and C. ICHOR is the clear, ethereal fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology, distinguishing them from mortals whose veins carry blood.
CACAO and COCOA both appear today. CACAO names the tree Theobroma cacao and its raw seeds; COCOA names the powder made from roasted and ground cacao beans, a later Anglicization that simplified the spelling while shifting the meaning to the processed product.
Yesterday’s NYT Spelling Bee for August 14, 2026 had the center letter M and three pangrams: ADMITTING, MANDATING, and INTIMIDATING.
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