The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
KNURL
Definition of KNURL
noun
A contorted knot in wood.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Other senses
KNURL carries 4 further meanings.
noun
A knob, knot, or other small protuberance.
noun
One of a series of small ridges or grooves on the surface or edge of a metal object, such as a thumbscrew, to aid in gripping.
transitive verb
To provide with knurls; mill.
noun
A knot; a hard substance; a nodule of stone; a protuberance in the bark of a tree.
Where it comes from
From knur + -le (“diminutive”), from Middle English knarre (“knot in wood”), earlier sense “a stone”, likely influenced by Old Norse knǫrr. gnarl is a later variant, from gnarled, via knurled.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
- Old Norse
- Middle English
- English
2 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
16th
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
0.7%
of traced words share this origin (212)
branch · 22.3% of traced words
How it is built
Same root, KNURL · 2 relatives in the game
KNURL in a sentence
“It's that scanner that peeks under your clothing, creating a ghostly but realistic image of your naked body, accurate down to every curve, knurl, protuberance, carbuncle, wen, bleb, wart and wattle and garfunkel.”
Airport frisk assessment: Gene gets rubbed the wrong way, 2010
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
KNURL in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 51 boards so far. 92 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 21, 10 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 151, 18 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 3 days.
First found by a player on Day 21, 10 June 2026.
Built from these letters
KNURL starts with K and ends with L. Sorted, its letters read KLNRU - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
Words that mean much the same
Near-synonyms of KNURL. Not interchangeable at the board - the grid decides that - but close in meaning.
Words that start KNURL
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 21
Could you have found KNURL?
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 21 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER