The answer to Wordle #720 was

BALSA: A large tree, Ochroma pyramidale, native to tropical America, with wood that is very light in weight.

Source: Wiktionary contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected and lightly formatted from Wiktionary; long entries may be shortened.

Word difficulty: Hard

Why it may be difficult: very uncommon in general English, a repeated letter.

Compare past puzzle difficulty →

How difficult was it for the solver?

In a replay of past puzzles, Wordle #720 scores 59/100 for solver difficulty (middle of the pack).

141 Possible answers after CRANE
7 Possible answers after SLATE
289 Possible answers after ADIEU
3 Guesses in the solver replay

This compares past puzzles under the same solver settings; it does not measure how players performed. Compare more puzzles →

Wordle #720, measured

This section compares BALSA's solver-difficulty percentile, first-guess results for ten familiar openers, and opt-in player reports. Each number identifies its dataset.

Solver difficulty, as a percentile

59/100

This score is a percentile, not an opinion. Under the site's fixed solver settings, BALSA measured harder for the solver than about 59% of all 1,907 recorded answers to date. Its rating is middle of the pack. It repeats A; CRANE, SLATE and ADIEU leave a large group.

Solver pressure ranks the answer within the pool; it does not measure player performance. The opener table compares first-guess results, and the contributed ratings report player results.

CRANE, SLATE and ADIEU benchmark

SALET left the fewest candidates: its first-guess feedback left 2 of the 2,374 words in the site's working answer pool. At the other end, AUDIO left 442 candidates, about 221 times as many. The vowel-heavy probes ADIEU and AUDIO revealed comparatively little here. Vowel coverage helps only when the answer's vowels are still in doubt.

First-guess feedback each opener would have received against BALSA, and how many answer-pool words would still match it
OpenerFirst-guess feedbackAnswers still possible
SALET SALET 2
SLATE SLATE 7
RAISE RAISE 8
TARSE TARSE 8
STARE STARE 20
ARISE ARISE 26
TRACE TRACE 133
CRANE CRANE 141
ADIEU ADIEU 289
AUDIO AUDIO 442

“Answers still possible” counts the words in the site's 2,374-word working answer pool whose feedback would match that opener exactly. This is pattern arithmetic, not a simulation. A smaller number means the opener left fewer possible answers after the first guess. It does not describe later turns.

Contributed player ratings

Not enough contributed games to publish player figures for this puzzle. Per-puzzle numbers appear only after at least 10 opt-in games arrive. See how the Observatory collects and publishes player data →

What did you get?

Tap your result to compare it with contributed games. Your choice stays in this browser and is not sent anywhere.

1 Suppressed
2 Suppressed
3 Suppressed
4 Suppressed
5 Suppressed
6 Suppressed
X Suppressed

The bars pool all 26 contributed games across every completed puzzle. The Observatory does not publish per-puzzle guess distributions below its sample threshold, so this is the broadest available comparison. “Suppressed” marks a low-count cell.

Solver replay

One route our solver takes from its usual opening word to BALSA.

The solver reaches the answer in 3 guesses.

Common questions

What was the Wordle answer for June 9, 2023?
The Wordle answer for June 9, 2023 (puzzle #720) was BALSA.
What does BALSA mean?
BALSA: A large tree, Ochroma pyramidale, native to tropical America, with wood that is very light in weight.
Why was Wordle #720 tricky?
BALSA is rated hard for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be difficult: very uncommon in general English, a repeated letter.

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