Like the instinct of bachelors and some of the police (5)
I believe the answer is:
basic
'like the instinct of bachelors and some of the police' is the definition.
I can't judge whether this defines the answer.
'like the instinct of bachelors and some of the police' is the wordplay.
'like' becomes 'as'.
'the instinct of bachelors' becomes 'ic' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'and' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'some of' means to look at the middle letters (I've seen 'some' mean this).
'the police' becomes 'thebill' (informal UK term for the police).
The middle letter of 'thebill' is 'b'.
'as'+'ic'='asic'
'asic' put after 'b' is 'BASIC'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for basic that I've seen before include "essential" , "Simple form of language" , "No-frills" , "Fundamental instruction's" , "Fundamental -- early computer language" .)