BASIC
Yes, BASIC was the Wordle answer on September 27, 2021 (Wordle #100).
As an opener, it rules out about 92.9% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈbeɪsɪk/
- Adjective
-
Necessary, essential for life or some process.
“Flour is a basic ingredient of bread.”
- Adjective
-
Elementary, simple, fundamental, merely functional.
“The Hotel Sparta’s accommodation is very basic.”
- Noun
-
A necessary commodity, a staple requirement.
“Rice is a basic for many Asian villagers.”
- Noun
-
An elementary building block, e.g. a fundamental piece of knowledge.
“Arithmetic is a basic for the study of mathematics.”
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: September 27, 2021 (#100).
See the full page for that puzzle: September 27, 2021 (#100).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
Wordle Observatory · optional
Played this Wordle?
Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds
Wordle Observatory · optional
Played this Wordle?
Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds
Add your result and a quick difficulty rating to help explain how this puzzle played.
See the public dataThank you. Your result now helps describe this puzzle.
See what the public sample says →How BASIC performs as a guess
BASIC 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 82.5% of games, misses completely in 17.5%, and leaves about 170 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,561 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 BASIC 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 BASIC 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 BASIC in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
BASIC can come back 90 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 BASIC; 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 BASIC
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to BASIC.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing BASIC:
Research on BASIC
Game-tree analysis and word research for BASIC, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with BASIC, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,448 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.83 guesses at best and is rank #2,206 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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 BAYSIHK.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, BASIC is a kind of language or good.
Synonyms staple introductory canonical FIRST base standard
Opposites incidental last acidic
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- BASIC sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 78 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
- Learner level
- Appears in beginner learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level A2); among the first words English learners study.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (2.9 of 5).
In a sentence
This is the basic problem.
That was the basic idea.
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).