The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
LURGY
Definition of LURGY
noun
Chiefly preceded by the. Idleness or laziness regarded as a medical condition; also, depression, especially resulting from a hangover.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
The noun is derived from fever-lurgy, possibly influenced by or related to lurk (“to hang out or wait”). Fever-lurgy is possibly a variant of fever lurden (“idleness regarded as a medical condition”), from fever + lurden, lurdane (“used as a general term of abuse for a person, especially one regarded as dull or idle: loafer, sluggard”). Lurden, lurdane is derived from Middle English lurdan (“coward; good-for-nothing person, fool, rascal; lazy person; low-born or ill-mannered person; unfortunate person; wicked person”), from Old French lordin, lourdin, from lourd, lourt, lorz (“clumsy, oafish; heavy”) (modern French lourd) + -in (suffix forming derogatory or diminutive nouns); and lourd from Late Latin lordus, lurdus (“clumsy; heavy slow; stupid”), probably from Latin lūridus (“sallow, wan; ghastly, horrifying”), possibly from lūror (“lividness; paleness, pallor”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)leh₃y- (“bluish”)) + -idus (suffix meaning ‘tending to’ forming adjectives). Noun sense 1.2 (“non-specific disease”) was popularized by the British radio comedy show The Goon Show (first broadcast 1951–1960), especially the episode “Lurgi Strikes Britain” (series 5, episode 7; 9 November 1954) written by the Anglo-Irish comedian Spike Milligan (1918–2002) and the English comedian Eric Sykes (1923–2012), about the outbreak of a highly dangerous and infectious and—as it turns out—fictitious disease known as “the Dreaded Lurgi” created as a scam. Another suggestion is that the word is a corruption and contraction of allergy, but this is a folk etymology as allergy has a soft g (/dʒ/) while lurgy has a hard /ɡ/ (rhyming with Fergie). The adjective is probably from an attributive use of the noun.
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.
LURGY in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 19 boards so far. 28 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 11, 31 May 2026. The most recent board was Day 102, 30 August 2026. It was on the latest finished board.
First found by a player on Day 11, 31 May 2026.
Built from these letters
LURGY starts with L and ends with Y. Sorted, its letters read GLRUY - 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.
Also seen on Day 11
Could you have found LURGY?
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 11 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER