The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
STARCH
Definition of STARCH
noun
A widely diffused vegetable substance, found in seeds, bulbs and tubers, as extracted (e.g. from potatoes, corn, rice, etc.) in the form of a white, glistening, granular or powdery substance, without taste or smell, and giving a very peculiar creaking sound when rubbed between the fingers. It is used as a food, in the production of commercial grape sugar, for stiffening linen in laundries, in making paste, etc.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From Middle English starche, sterche, from Old English *stierċe (“stiffness, rigidity, strength”), from Proto-West Germanic *starkī (“stiffness, rigidity, fortitude, strength”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *sterg- (“stiff, rigid”). Cognate with dialectal Dutch sterk (“strong”), Middle Low German sterke (“strength”), German Stärke (“strength", also "starch”), Swedish stärkelse (“starch”), Icelandic sterkja (“starch”). Related to English stark (“stiff, strong, vigorous, powerful”).
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.
STARCH in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 2 boards so far.
It first turned up on Day 41, 30 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 87, 15 August 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 15 days.
First found by a player on Day 41, 30 June 2026.
Built from these letters
STARCH starts with S and ends with H. Sorted, its letters read ACHRST - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
Same letters, different word
2 other words use exactly these letters. Worth knowing at the board: an anagram fits a grid the same way.
Words that start STARCH
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 41
Could you have found STARCH?
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 41 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER