The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
CRACKER
Definition of CRACKER
noun
A noisy boaster; a swaggering fellow.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From Middle English craker (“a boaster”), equivalent to crack (“to break, snap, utter, make a sound”) + -er. From crack (verb), the sound made when one is broken. The hard "bread" and "biscuit" sense is first attested in 1739. The computing senses of cracker, crack, and cracking were promoted in the 1980s as an alternative to hacker, by programmers concerned about negative public associations of hack, hacking (“creative computer coding”). See Citations:cracker. Various theories exist regarding the term's application to poor white Southerners. One theory holds that it originated with disadvantaged corn and wheat farmers (corncrackers), who cracked their crops rather than taking them to the mill. Another theory asserts that it was applied due to Georgia and Florida settlers (Florida crackers) who cracked loud whips to drive herds of cattle, or, alternatively, from the whip cracking of plantation slave drivers. Yet another theory maintains that the term cracker was in use in Elizabethan times to describe braggarts (see crack (“to boast”)); a letter from 1766 supports this theory.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
- Middle English
- English
One recorded step before English.
Deepest traced root
4th
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
6.2%
of traced words share this origin (5,109)
branch · 22.6% of traced words
How it is built
Same root, CRACKER · 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.
CRACKER in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 2 boards so far.
It first turned up on Day 139, 6 October 2026. The most recent board was Day 140, 7 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 26 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
CRACKER starts with C and ends with R. Sorted, its letters read ACCEKRR - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. C and R appear more than once.
Words that start CRACKE
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Could you have found CRACKER?
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