The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
SHORTCAKE
Definition of SHORTCAKE
noun
A sweet cake or biscuit (crumbly leavened bread) typically made with flour, sugar, salt, butter, milk or cream, and sometimes eggs, and leavened with baking powder or baking soda.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From short + cake.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
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.
SHORTCAKE in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 8 boards so far.
It first turned up on Day 74, 2 August 2026. The most recent board was Day 164, 31 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 2 days.
First ever to find it
on Day 74, 2 August 2026 - before anyone else in Outlier's history. See the Pioneers
Built from these letters
SHORTCAKE starts with S and ends with E. Sorted, its letters read ACEHKORST - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
Words that start SHORTC
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Could you have found SHORTCAKE?
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 74 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER