The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
IRKSOME
Definition of IRKSOME
adjective
Marked by irritation or annoyance; disagreeable; troublesome by reason of long continuance or repetition
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From Middle English irkesome, irksum, equivalent to irk + -some, or perhaps continuing (in altered form) from Old English weorcsum (“painful, hurtful”).
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
- Old English
- Middle English
- English
2 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
7th
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
3.7%
of traced words share this origin (2,864)
branch · 22.6% of traced words
How it is built
Same root, IRKSOME · 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.
IRKSOME in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 43 boards so far. 112 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 35, 24 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 155, 22 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 2 days.
First found by a player on Day 35, 24 June 2026.
Built from these letters
IRKSOME starts with I and ends with E. Sorted, its letters read EIKMORS - 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.
Words that start IRKSOM
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 35
Could you have found IRKSOME?
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 35 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER