Accepted guess Not a possible answer F tier for first-turn info

BASHA

BASHA is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.

As an opener, it rules out about 86.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈbæʃə/

Noun

A tarpaulin or plastic waterproof sheet.

Noun

A makeshift shelter made from the above.

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

Yes

Included in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.

Possible answer

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

Past Wordle answer

Not used yet

No past answer date found.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How BASHA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BASHA as a guess, but the solver does not list it as a possible answer.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 69.4% of games, misses completely in 30.6%, and leaves about 325 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,704 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.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

First-turn measures

All four describe BASHA 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.

3.82 Entropy (bits)
325 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
86.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 15% of evaluated openers
2.13 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BASHA 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.

3.80 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#11,704 Rank among openers
Opening with BASHA solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.80 average. It ranks #11,704 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
43
3 guesses
705
4 guesses
1,296
5 guesses
296
6 guesses
14
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.46 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
69%
Green tile
25%
All gray
31%

Feedback distribution

BASHA can come back 71 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

726 answers
285 answers
274 answers
165 answers
157 answers
114 answers
88 answers
62 answers
39 answers
38 answers
38 answers
37 answers
31 answers
30 answers
26 answers
26 answers
19 answers
19 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

Base letter-value totals for BASHA; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.

Scrabble

B3A1S1H4A1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.

Strategy after playing BASHA

What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to BASHA.

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BASHA:

31% chance
Suggested:
RIONE
12% chance
Suggested:
ALERT
12% chance
Suggested:
TRONE

Follow-ups for common patterns

Ranked follow-up guesses for the 10 most common feedback patterns.

30.6%
RIONE 5.98 bits
12.0%
ALERT 5.45 bits
11.5%
TRONE 5.38 bits
7.0%
TRINE 4.87 bits
6.6%
CONTE 5.52 bits
4.8%
PEART 4.83 bits
3.7%
TOILE 5.16 bits
2.6%
TORSE 4.66 bits
1.6%
ROUTE 4.72 bits
1.6%
ROUET 4.39 bits

Research on BASHA

Game-tree analysis and word research for BASHA, with an explanation for each figure.

Optimal play

Opening with BASHA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.83 guesses and ranks #12,084 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 BASHA can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.80, at or below the proven-optimal 3.83, because the two figures score different answer lists.

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 first syllable Say it BAHSHUH.

Rhymes with KASHA

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BASHA sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).