The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
ROOTS
Definition of ROOTS
noun
plural of root
noun
The part of a plant, generally underground, that anchors and supports the plant body, absorbs and stores water and nutrients, and in some plants is able to perform vegetative reproduction.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Word DNA
ROOTS inherits its ancestry from its root, ROOT.
Line of descent
5 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
2nd
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
14.2%
of traced words share this origin (11,575)
How it is built
Same root, ROOT · 14 relatives in the game
Its etymology also names Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Scots, Swedish.
Every Proto-Indo-European word → · The Word DNA of OUTLIER →
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
ROOTS in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 10 boards so far. 12 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 22, 11 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 152, 19 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 12 days.
First found by a player on Day 22, 11 June 2026.
Built from these letters
ROOTS starts with R and ends with S. Sorted, its letters read OORST - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. O appears more than once, including a double letter.
Same letters, different word
5 other words use exactly these letters. Worth knowing at the board: an anagram fits a grid the same way.
Words that start ROOTS
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 22
Could you have found ROOTS?
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 22 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER