The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
SHARD
Definition of SHARD
noun
A piece of broken glass or pottery, especially one found in an archaeological dig.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From Middle English shard, scherd, scheard, schord, from Old English sċeard (“a broken piece; shard”), from Proto-West Germanic *skard, from Proto-Germanic *skardą (“notch; nick”), from *skardaz (“damaged; nicked; scarred”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut”). Akin to Scots schaird (“shard”), French écharde (“splinter”), Dutch schaarde (“tear; notch; fragment”), German Scharte (“notch”), Old Norse skarð (“notch, hack”) (> Danish skår). The database sense is perhaps derived from the online gaming sense or from SHARD (System for Highly Available Replicated Data), name of a 1980s database product.
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.
SHARD in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 29 boards so far. 55 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 23, 12 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 107, 4 September 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 2 days.
First found by a player on Day 23, 12 June 2026.
Built from these letters
SHARD starts with S and ends with D. Sorted, its letters read ADHRS - 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.
Words that start SHARD
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 23
Could you have found SHARD?
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