The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
FOULES
Definition of FOULES
Wiktionary has no entry for FOULES itself. This is its base word, FOUL.
adjective
Covered with, or containing unclean matter; dirty.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
The origin recorded for FOUL.
Inherited from Middle English ffoul, foul, foull, fowel, fowle, fuyle, voul, vul, from Old English fūl (“foul, dirty, unclean, impure, vile, corrupt, rotten, stinking, guilty”), from Proto-West Germanic *fūl, from Proto-Germanic *fūlaz (“foul, rotten”), from Proto-Indo-European *puH- (“foul, rotten”). Cognate with Central Franconian fuul (“putrid, rotten; lazy, workshy”), Cimbrian baul, vaul (“putrid, rotten”), Dutch vuil (“dirty, foul; lewd, obscene; dishonorable; illegal”), German faul (“foul, putrid, rotten; lazy”), Yiddish פֿױל (foyl, “putrid; lazy”), Danish ful (“nasty, ugly”), Icelandic fúll (“foul, rotten, sullen”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk ful (“clever, sly”), and Swedish ful (“ugly; bad, dirty”), Gothic 𐍆𐌿𐌻𐍃 (fuls, “fetid, foul, putrid”), and through Indo-European, with Latin puter (“decaying, rotten; friable, crumbling”), Greek πύο (pýo), πύον (pýon, “pus”), Albanian fëlliq (“to make dirty, sully”), Latvian pūt (“to rot”), Lithuanian pūti (“to rot”), Armenian փուտ (pʻut, “rottenness”), Persian پوده (pude, “rubbed, worn; foul, rotten; empty, hollow”), Sanskrit पूयति (pūyati, “to become foul; to stink”). More at putrid. Ancient Greek φαῦλος (phaûlos, “bad”) is a false cognate inasmuch as it is not from the same etymon, instead being cognate to few.
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.
FOULES in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 4 boards so far.
It first turned up on Day 30, 19 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 85, 13 August 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 17 days.
First found by a player on Day 30, 19 June 2026.
Built from these letters
FOULES starts with F and ends with S. Sorted, its letters read EFLOSU - 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.
Also seen on Day 30
Could you have found FOULES?
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 30 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER