The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.

HOLES

/həʊlz/5 letters

Definition of HOLES

noun

plural of hole

HOLE

noun

A hollow place or cavity; an excavation; a pit; a dent; a depression; a fissure.

Wiktionary · CC BY-SA

Word DNA

HOLES inherits its ancestry from its root, HOLE.

Line of descent

  1. Proto-Germanic
  2. Old English
  3. Middle English
  4. English

3 recorded generations before English.

Proto-Germanic

Deepest traced root

6th

of 59 source languages in OUTLIER

4.7%

of traced words share this origin (3,750)

Germanic

branch · 22.6% of traced words

How it is built

noun1 syllable

Same root, HOLE · 7 relatives in the game

Its etymology also names Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish.

Every Proto-Germanic word → · The Word DNA of OUTLIER →

Rarity score
Withheld
Revealed only in play
Tier
Withheld
Find it yourself

OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.

HOLES in OUTLIER

Players have found it on 15 boards so far. 18 players have found it across Outlier's history.

Day 1Day 161
Its 15 boards, across 161 finished boards · taller bars are busier boards
15
Boards found on
7
First board
158
Latest board
64
Longest gap, days

It first turned up on Day 7, 28 May 2026. The most recent board was Day 158, 25 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 3 days.

First found by a player on Day 7, 28 May 2026.

Built from these letters

HOLES
5
Letters
2
Vowels
3
Consonants
5
Different letters
1
Longest consonant run
1
Longest vowel run

HOLES starts with H and ends with S. Sorted, its letters read EHLOS - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.

Same letters, different word

4 other words use exactly these letters. Worth knowing at the board: an anagram fits a grid the same way.

Words that start HOLES

Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.

Could you have found HOLES?

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 7 - and most players walked straight past it.

Play today's OUTLIER