The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
CAKEWALK
Definition of CAKEWALK
noun
A contest in which cake was offered for the best dancers.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From cake + walk. Originally an African-American form of dance and music that developed after the Civil War, later popularised by minstrel shows. It was danced at social events, with the best dancers often receiving cake as a prize. It derives from dance competitions by plantation slaves in which the style of dance lampooned the ballroom dances of the slaveowners. Slaveowners seem to have found the competitions entertaining and the habit of offering cake may originate from this period. The name is sometimes also applied to the dance's precursor on the plantations. Doing the cakewalk well required virtuosity, and a major aesthetic aspect of that virtuosity was the apparent ease with which the dance was performed. This gave rise to the idiom as easy as a cakewalk, which in turn led to the sense of cakewalk as something that is easy. See the linked Wikipedia article for more.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
How it is built
Same root, CAKEWALK · 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.
CAKEWALK in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 1 board so far.
It first turned up on Day 139, 6 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 6 days.
First ever to find it
on Day 139, 6 October 2026 - before anyone else in Outlier's history. See the Pioneers
Built from these letters
CAKEWALK starts with C and ends with K. Sorted, its letters read AACEKKLW - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. A and K appear more than once.
Words that start CAKEWA
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Could you have found CAKEWALK?
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 139 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER