The NYT Wordle on 21 February 2026 felt like a shot of espresso for the grid, built around energy, alertness, and that moment when sleep finally wears off.
Top Hints for Today’s Wordle: 21 February 2026
Here are a few hints to help you glide toward the answer without spoilers:
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It is a 5-letter English word that you probably use or hear very often.
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It can function as both a verb and an adjective, depending on the sentence.
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The core idea of the word is “not sleeping” or “coming out of sleep” into full awareness.
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You might hear it in phrases about staying alert late at night or getting ready early in the morning.
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The word contains three vowels, and one of those vowels appears twice.
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It both starts and ends with a vowel.
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The only consonants in the word are a soft one that often follows an opening vowel and a sharper consonant in the fourth position.
Use these to narrow down your guesses; the last few basically lock in the solution if you’re paying attention to your tiles.
Answer for Today’s Wordle: 21 February 2026
Today’s puzzle rewards players who think about mornings, coffee, and that liminal space between sleep and full focus. The repeated vowel can throw you off at first, but once you place the sharper consonant near the end, the whole word lights up in a very satisfying way. If your earlier guesses leaned toward moods or actions related to energy and consciousness, you were definitely circling the right neighborhood.
AWAKE
Even on gentler days like this, a solid strategy makes the difference between a clean three-guesser and a panicked sixth attempt. Wordle gives you six tries to uncover a single five-letter word, with colored tiles showing whether letters are correct and in the right place, in the word but misplaced, or not present at all.
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Open with information-rich words – Start with a word packed with common vowels and consonants to quickly reveal letter patterns.
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Probe vowel positions early – When a word is likely to be vowel-heavy, spend a guess or two just mapping where those vowels can and cannot go.
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Track repeated letters – If a letter keeps showing up as yellow or green, consider that it might appear more than once in the solution.
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Use every guess as data – A “bad” guess that turns mostly gray still tells you which letters to avoid in future attempts.
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Reset your perspective – If you’re stuck staring at the same idea, step away for a minute; a fresh look often reveals an obvious word you missed.
Why is the NYT Wordle so popular?
Wordle is a simple daily word game hosted by The New York Times where everyone worldwide faces the same five-letter puzzle and has six attempts to solve it using color-coded tile feedback. That mix of strict limits and clear visual clues makes each round quick to play but surprisingly deep to reason through, so it slots neatly into a morning routine.
Its popularity also comes from the shared experience: players compare streaks, discuss strategies, and post their colored grids without revealing the answer, turning a solo puzzle into a quiet social ritual across time zones. Add in the satisfaction of cracking a word like AWAKE before your coffee even kicks in, and it’s easy to see why so many keep coming back each day.
