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

BASHO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A sumo tournament of any kind.

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 BASHO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BASHO 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 81.3% of games, misses completely in 18.7%, and leaves about 187 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,951 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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 BASHO 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.

4.49 Entropy (bits)
187 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 51% of evaluated openers
1.45 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BASHO 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#6,951 Rank among openers
Opening with BASHO solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.70 average. It ranks #6,951 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
61
3 guesses
836
4 guesses
1,219
5 guesses
221
6 guesses
17
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
24%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

BASHO can come back 89 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

444 answers
260 answers
257 answers
176 answers
161 answers
110 answers
97 answers
96 answers
79 answers
59 answers
55 answers
39 answers
38 answers
37 answers
29 answers
27 answers
27 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3A1S1H4O1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing BASHO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BASHO:

19% chance
Suggested:
LINER
11% chance
Suggested:
ALERT
11% chance
Suggested:
DRONE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.7%
LINER 5.97 bits
11.0%
ALERT 5.52 bits
10.8%
DRONE 5.16 bits
7.4%
TRINE 5.44 bits
6.8%
TRINE 4.77 bits
4.6%
STALE 4.70 bits
4.1%
TRICE 5.39 bits
4.0%
SPORT 4.34 bits
3.3%
MOLAR 4.27 bits
2.5%
TUILE 4.94 bits

Research on BASHO

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

Optimal play

Opening with BASHO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,343 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 BASHO can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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 BAHSHOH. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BASHO 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.

In a sentence

Basho was the greatest poet.
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)
This is a very famous haiku by Basho.
© tatoeba.org contributor magnificentgoddess (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).