The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
PSALTERY
Definition of PSALTERY
noun
A zither-like musical instrument consisting of a soundboard with multiple strings, played by plucking the strings with the fingers or a plectrum.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Other senses
PSALTERY carries 4 further meanings.
noun
An ancient stringed instrument played by plucking the strings with the fingers or a plectrum.
noun
The term is loosely applied to a variety of stringed instruments, some of them lyres or harps, rather than zithers.
noun
A musical instrument of the zither group, having several or many strings variously tuned, which are sounded by the finger with or without the aid of a plectrum.
noun
Same as psalter.
Where it comes from
A learned alteration of Middle English sauterie, sautrie (rarely psautry), from Old French psalterie, from Latin psaltērium, from Ancient Greek ψαλτήριον (psaltḗrion, “stringed instrument, psaltery, harp”), from ψάλλω (psállō, “to touch sharply, to pluck, to pull, to twitch” and in the case of the strings of musical instruments, “to play a stringed instrument with the fingers, and not with the plectron”). Doublet of psalter, psalterion, and psalterium. Cognate of psalm and psalmody.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
4 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
3rd
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
12.2%
of traced words share this origin (9,569)
branch · 12.2% of traced words
How it is built
Same root, PSALTERY · 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.
PSALTERY in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 52 boards so far. 174 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 26, 15 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 159, 26 October 2026. It was on the latest finished board.
First ever to find it
on Day 26, 15 June 2026 - before anyone else in Outlier's history. See the Pioneers
Built from these letters
PSALTERY starts with P and ends with Y. Sorted, its letters read AELPRSTY - 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 PSALTE
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 26
Could you have found PSALTERY?
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 26 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER