The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
ANCRESS
Definition of ANCRESS
noun
Obsolete form of anchoress (“female anchorite”).
noun
A female anchorite. A woman who chooses to withdraw from the world to live a solitary life of prayer and contemplation.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Word DNA
ANCRESS inherits its ancestry from its root, ANCHORESS.
Line of descent
- Middle English
- English
One recorded step before English.
Deepest traced root
4th
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
6.1%
of traced words share this origin (4,799)
branch · 22.6% of traced words
How it is built
Same root, ANCHORESS · 1 relative in the game
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
ANCRESS in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 1 board so far.
It first turned up on Day 140, 7 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 17 days.
First ever to find it
on Day 140, 7 October 2026 - before anyone else in Outlier's history. See the Pioneers
Built from these letters
ANCRESS starts with A and ends with S. Sorted, its letters read ACENRSS - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. S appears more than once, including a double letter.
Same letters, different word
One other word uses exactly these letters. Worth knowing at the board: an anagram fits a grid the same way.
Words that start ANCRES
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Could you have found ANCRESS?
OUTLIER is a daily word game. One grid, the same grid for everybody, and the words nobody else spots are the ones that pay. This word was on Day 140 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER