BATON

Meaning

A staff or truncheon, used for various purposes

“the baton of a field marshal”

• verbTo strike with a baton.

BATON as a word-puzzle answer

BATON is a 5-letter word with 2 vowels (A, O) and 3 consonants (B, T, N). Every letter is distinct, so it rarely punishes a clean opening guess.

It leans on high-frequency letters (A, T, O, N), so a strong vowel-and-common-consonant opener tends to light up quickly. There are no rare letters here, so it is a fair, mid-difficulty answer for the daily Classic puzzle.