The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
IDEAL
Definition of IDEAL
adjective
Pertaining to ideas, or to a given idea.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From French idéal, from Late Latin ideālis (“existing in idea”), by surface analysis, idea + -al, from Latin idea (“idea”); see idea. In mathematics, the noun ring theory sense was first introduced by German mathematician Richard Dedekind in his 1871 edition of a text on number theory. The concept was quickly expanded to ring theory and later generalised to order theory. The set theory and Lie theory senses can be regarded as applications of the order theory sense.
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.
IDEAL in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 11 boards so far. 11 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 19, 8 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 98, 26 August 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 4 days.
First found by a player on Day 19, 8 June 2026.
Built from these letters
IDEAL starts with I and ends with L. Sorted, its letters read ADEIL - 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 IDEAL
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 19
Could you have found IDEAL?
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 19 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER