The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
SERVAL
Definition of SERVAL
noun
A medium-sized African wild cat, Leptailurus serval, formerly Felis serval.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From French serval, from Portuguese (lobo) cerval (“Iberian lynx”), from Latin lupus cervārius (literally “stag wolf”), i.e. "wolf that hunts stags", from cervus (“deer, stag”).
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
- Latin
- Portuguese
- French
- English
3 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
1st
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
33%
of traced words share this origin (9,764)
branch · 33% of traced words
How it is built
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
SERVAL in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 50 boards so far. 100 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 23, 12 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 150, 17 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 1 day.
First found by a player on Day 23, 12 June 2026.
Built from these letters
SERVAL starts with S and ends with L. Sorted, its letters read AELRSV - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
Same letters, different word
6 other words use exactly these letters. Worth knowing at the board: an anagram fits a grid the same way.
Words that start SERVAL
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 23
Could you have found SERVAL?
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 23 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER