ABASE
Yes, ABASE was the Wordle answer on July 15, 2021 (Wordle #26).
As an opener, it rules out about 92.5% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /əˈbeɪs/
- Verb
-
To lower, as in condition in life, office, rank, etc., so as to cause pain or hurt feelings; to degrade, to depress, to humble, to humiliate.
- Verb
-
To lower physically; to depress; to cast or throw down; to stoop.
“to abase the eye”
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: July 15, 2021 (#26).
See the full page for that puzzle: July 15, 2021 (#26).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →How ABASE performs as a guess
ABASE is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 81.6% of games, misses completely in 18.4%, and leaves about 177 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,557 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.80 guesses in games solved within six turns.
Try your feedback pattern
Tap the tiles to match your feedback, then see the ranked follow-up guesses.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe ABASE used as an opening guess. Entropy is the same idea as “avg ruled out” on a log scale: a higher number means the guess splits the possible answers into more, smaller groups.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How ABASE performed in the previous complete opener benchmark, against its captured answer snapshot. These research figures are separate from today's solver recommendations. See the data page for the method.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches ABASE in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
ABASE can come back 77 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for ABASE; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing ABASE
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to ABASE.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing ABASE:
Research on ABASE
Game-tree analysis and word research for ABASE, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with ABASE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,649 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with ABASE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.80; proven optimal play reaches 3.78. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.
These figures come from exhaustive game-tree search and are exact for the NYT lists of July 2023 (3,158 answers). They do not use the site's working answer pool.
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the second syllable Say it UHBAHS. Estimated pronunciation
This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, ABASE is a kind of hurt.
Synonyms humble humiliate
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- ABASE sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.
In a sentence
You will never abase me, Tom.
I will abase myself, no matter how.
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).