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

BASON

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Alternative form of basin.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it BASUHN.

Rhymes with NASON

Use BASON in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.5% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

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

How BASON performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BASON 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 83.3% of games, misses completely in 16.7%, and leaves about 155 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,449 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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 BASON 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.

4.83 Entropy (bits)
155 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.5% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BASON 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#2,449 Rank among openers
Opening with BASON left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.63 average. It ranks #2,449 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
64
3 guesses
931
4 guesses
1,184
5 guesses
163
6 guesses
10

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ANOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
29%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

BASON can come back 105 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

399 answers
227 answers
212 answers
170 answers
140 answers
138 answers
125 answers
87 answers
57 answers
54 answers
53 answers
51 answers
42 answers
40 answers
36 answers
30 answers
25 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3A1S1O1N1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing BASON

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BASON:

17% chance
Suggested:
TRIED
10% chance
Suggested:
TRACE
9% chance
Suggested:
TRODE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.7% →
TRIED 6.01 bits
9.5% →
TRACE 5.61 bits
8.9% →
TRODE 5.12 bits
7.1% →
STILE 5.36 bits
5.9% →
TRIPE 4.54 bits
5.8% →
TRICE 5.18 bits
5.2% →
THALE 4.64 bits
3.6% →
STORE 4.65 bits
2.4% →
DRICE 4.55 bits
2.3% →
MORAL 4.40 bits

Research on BASON

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

Optimal play

Opening with BASON, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #3,144 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.81 guesses at best and is rank #1,552 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BASON 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.

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).