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Most word boards sit still and let you think. Vanishing doesn't. It's an Outlier Live board that starts as an ordinary OUTLIER grid and loses a letter every round, so the word you were saving for round eight might not be spellable by the time round eight comes. It's the one Live board that changes the rules, not just the letters, and it rewards a very specific kind of player: the one who can see what's worth grabbing before it's gone. Here's how it works, why it's fair, and how to play it well.

What Vanishing is

Vanishing is one of the Outlier Live board types. Most Live boards change the letters you're dealt: more vowels, a letter that repeats, a trap or two. Vanishing deals you an ordinary board and then takes it apart, one letter per round.

The rule fits on one line: every round, the board loses a letter. You don't choose which one goes, and neither does anyone else in the room.

24Letters in round 1

1Letter lost per round

15Letters in round 10

60sOn the clock each round

Everything else is the Outlier Live you know: ten rounds, a 60-second clock, rarity scoring, and the same room of players racing you. Letters still don't need to touch: any word you can spell from the letters on the board counts. The only difference is that the board in round ten is not the board you started with.

Start a Vanishing game →

One tap opens a room on a Vanishing board. Send friends the link to join.

How it plays, round by round

The first letter goes as the room opens, so round 1 is played on 24 letters. At the start of every round after that, one more letter fades off the board and leaves an empty square where it was. The empty squares stay for the rest of the game, so you can always see what's gone. By round 10, 15 letters remain.

Words still burn the way they do in every Live game: a word anybody played in an earlier round won't count again. So the board narrows from both ends at once, letters vanishing and words being taken.

Here it is on a sample board.

Round 1: twenty-four letters, one gone as the room opened, with PASTOR lit. — Step 1. Twenty-four letters to start.

Round 5: five letters gone, including the C and N, so CORNET is no longer possible; MOLE still is. — Step 2. Letters start to go.

Round 10: fifteen letters left, and DEAL still fits. — Step 3. Fifteen letters left.

Same board, same order, for everyone in the room

This is the part people ask about most, so here it is plainly: the order the letters vanish in is fixed before anyone sees the board, and it's identical for every player in the room.

Round four takes the same letter for everyone. Nobody's speed, score or word choices change which letter goes next.

Round four takes the same letter for everyone. The board is a shared puzzle, not a slot machine.

The order is never shown in advance, so there's no peeking at the next one. Everybody gets the same surprise at the same moment.

Planned, not random

A board that loses letters at random could strip every vowel by round six and leave the room staring at consonants. Vanishing doesn't do that. The order is planned when the board is built, with one goal: keep the board worth playing right to the last round.

Every Vanishing board is checked before it's allowed into play. Even in round 10, with only 15 letters left, it has to still carry at least 1,500 playable words, including at least 40 rare ones. The plan also keeps the rare words alive to the end instead of letting them disappear early.

What that doesn't promise is that YOUR favourite word survives. The board is planned to stay rich, not to protect any one word. Which brings us to strategy.

Twelve tips for playing Vanishing well

1. Scout in round 1Round 1 is the fullest board you'll get. Spend the first seconds finding your best three to five words and ranking them. That shortlist is your whole game plan.

2. Best word firstA rare word scores the same in round 1 as in round 9. The only difference is whether its letters are still there, and whether someone else has burned it. If you've found something great, play it now.

3. Long words are fragileA nine-letter word needs nine specific letters to survive. Every round is a fresh chance to break it. Grab long words early, while the board is full.

4. Guard the lonely lettersIf your word leans on the only Q, Z, X, J or K on the board, it's one round away from impossible. Same goes for a word that needs both copies of a doubled letter. Spend those first.

5. Short rare words are your safety netA four- or five-letter rare word needs far fewer letters to stay alive. They're the words most likely to still be there late, so save them for the last rounds, not your long shots.

6. Rescan every roundThe board just changed. Losing a letter kills some words, but a fresh look often turns up something you walked past the first time.

7. Long shots cost nothingMisses are free. If you think you know a strange word, try it. The worst that happens is the dictionary says no.

8. Watch what's burnedA word anyone played earlier won't count again. Don't spend clock on the obvious answers from round two; look for what the room hasn't found yet.

9. Don't panic lateDown to 16 letters? That board still carries thousands of words and dozens of rare ones, by design. The last rounds are often where the best players separate.

10. Keep a backup listWhen a word dies, you want your next-best option ready, not a blank stare at a changing board. A quick mental list of two or three spares is enough.

11. Watch the empty squaresThe gaps show you exactly which letters have gone. Before you type a word from memory, check it against what's left. It saves you a refused guess and a few seconds.

12. Use the whole clockThe letter for the next round is already decided, so there's nothing to wait for. Every second you leave on the clock is a word you didn't play on a board that won't come back.

A sample game, in miniature

Say round 1 opens and you spot three things you like: a long, rare nine-letter word, a rare five-letter word, and a solid seven-letter word. The nine-letter word uses the board's only K.

The Vanishing player plays the nine-letter word in round 1. It needs the most letters and the loneliest one, so it has the most to lose. The seven-letter word goes in round 2. The five-letter word, the sturdiest of the three, waits for a late round, and in between you rescan every round and play the best new word each fresh look turns up.

The player who does it the other way, easy words first and the long one 'for the finish', often gets to round eight and discovers the K has gone, or that someone else took the word. Same board, same letters, very different score.

Where you'll find it

Vanishing is an Outlier Live board. It comes up in open Live rooms alongside the other board types, and it has its own night in the rotation of Outlier Live Daily, the one shared game everyone plays together each evening. You'll know it when you see it: the board is labelled VANISHING. Rematches of a Vanishing game stay Vanishing, and the FAQ has the full Live rules.

It's the board where reading the whole grid in round 1 pays off most, and where a player with a plan beats one with a hunch. Scout it, rank it, spend your rarest letters first, and enjoy watching everyone else's favourite word disappear.