The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
SCARCE
Definition of SCARCE
adjective
Uncommon, rare; difficult to find; insufficient to meet a demand.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From Middle English scars, scarse, from Old Northern French scars, escars ("sparing, niggard, parsimonious, miserly, poor"; > French échars, Medieval Latin scarsus (“diminished, reduced”)), of uncertain origin. One theory is that it derives originally from a Late Latin *scarpsus, *excarpsus, a participle form of *excarpere (“take out”), from Latin ex- + carpere; yet the sense evolution is difficult to trace. Compare Middle Dutch schaers (“scarce”), Middle Dutch schaers (“a pair of shears, plowshare”), scheeren (“to shear”). The standard pronunciation having the /ɛə(ɹ)/ vowel instead of expected /ɑː(ɹ)/ is due to a tendency for Old and Middle French preconsonantal /ar/ to be borrowed as Middle English /aːr/ that only survives in this word and dace in the modern standard, but is more frequent in Early Modern English and traditional dialects; compare Scots gairden (“garden”), lairge (“large”).
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.
SCARCE in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 1 board so far. 31 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 90, 18 August 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 32 days.
First ever to find it
on Day 90, 18 August 2026 - before anyone else in Outlier's history. See the Pioneers
Built from these letters
SCARCE starts with S and ends with E. Sorted, its letters read ACCERS - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. C appears more than once.
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 SCARCE
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Could you have found SCARCE?
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 90 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER