The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
BACKFIRES
Definition of BACKFIRES
noun
plural of backfire
noun
A premature explosion in the cylinder of a gas or oil engine during the exhaust or the compression stroke, tending to drive the piston in the wrong direction.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Word DNA
BACKFIRES inherits its ancestry from its root, BACKFIRE.
How it is built
Same root, BACKFIRE · 2 relatives 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.
BACKFIRES 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 3 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
BACKFIRES starts with B and ends with S. Sorted, its letters read ABCEFIKRS - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
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 BACKFI
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Could you have found BACKFIRES?
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