The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
HERON
Definition of HERON
noun
Any long-legged, long-necked wading bird of the family Ardeidae.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From Middle English heron, heroun, heiron, from Anglo-Norman heiron, from Medieval Latin hairō, from Frankish and Proto-West Germanic *hraigrō, from Proto-Germanic *haigrô (compare Swedish häger and Danish hejre), dissimilation of *hraigrô (compare Old English hrāgra, Dutch reiger, German Reiher), from imitative Proto-Indo-European *(s)kreik-, *(s)kreig- (“to screech, creak”) (compare Welsh crëyr (“heron”), Ancient Greek κρίζω (krízō, “to creak, screech”). Compare also egret from the same Germanic etymon.
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.
HERON in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 18 boards so far. 22 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 29, 18 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 107, 4 September 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 2 days.
First found by a player on Day 29, 18 June 2026.
Built from these letters
HERON starts with H and ends with N. Sorted, its letters read EHNOR - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
Same letters, different word
2 other words use exactly these letters. Worth knowing at the board: an anagram fits a grid the same way.
Words that start HERON
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 29
Could you have found HERON?
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 29 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER