The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
CISTRON
Definition of CISTRON
noun
The unit of hereditary material (e.g. DNA) that encodes one protein.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
Coined by American molecular biologist Seymour Benzer in 1957, from cis + trans + -on. Named in the context of using a "cis-trans comparison" for identifying " […] whether two mutants, having similar defects, are indeed defective in the same way." This etymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
CISTRON in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 4 boards so far.
It first turned up on Day 39, 28 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 102, 30 August 2026. It was on the latest finished board.
First ever to find it
on Day 39, 28 June 2026 - before anyone else in Outlier's history. See the Pioneers
Built from these letters
CISTRON starts with C and ends with N. Sorted, its letters read CINORST - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
Same letters, different word
3 other words use exactly these letters. Worth knowing at the board: an anagram fits a grid the same way.
Words that start CISTRO
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 39
Could you have found CISTRON?
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 39 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER