The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
SONDER
Definition of SONDER
noun
The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
Coined by American author and neologist John Koenig in 2012, whose project, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, aims to come up with new words for emotions that currently lack names. Inspired by German sonder- (“special”) and French sonder (“to probe”).
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
2 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
5th
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
7.2%
of traced words share this origin (2,118)
branch · 15.4% of traced words
How it is built
Same root, SOND · 1 relative in the game
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
SONDER in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 123 boards so far. 573 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 7, 28 May 2026. The most recent board was Day 151, 18 October 2026. It was on the latest finished board.
First found by a player on Day 7, 28 May 2026.
Built from these letters
SONDER starts with S and ends with R. Sorted, its letters read DENORS - 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.
Could you have found SONDER?
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 7 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER