BATON
Yes, BATON has been the Wordle answer on December 19, 2021 (Wordle #183) and July 3, 2026 (Wordle #1840).
As an opener, it rules out about 93.6% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈbætɒn//ˈbæt(ə)n//bəˈtɑn/
- Noun
-
A staff or truncheon, used for various purposes.
- Noun
-
A ceremonial staff of a field marshal or a similar high-ranking military office.
- Verb
-
To strike with a baton.
“She passed the baton to her successor after retiring.”
Alternative forms: bâton
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 2 timesPast Wordle answer: December 19, 2021 (#183); July 3, 2026 (#1840).
See the full page for each puzzle: December 19, 2021 (#183); July 3, 2026 (#1840).
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 BATON performs as a guess
BATON 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 83.2% of games, misses completely in 16.8%, and leaves about 152 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,531 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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 BATON 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 BATON 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 BATON in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
BATON can come back 113 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 BATON; 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 BATON
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to BATON.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing BATON:
Research on BATON
Game-tree analysis and word research for BATON, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with BATON, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,058 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 BATON can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.66, 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 second syllable Say it BUHTAHN.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- BATON sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 4 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.9 of 5).
In a sentence
The conductor raised his baton.
The conductor lifted his baton.
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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).