The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
TAIL
Definition of TAIL
noun
The caudal appendage of an animal that is attached to their posterior and near the anus or cloaca.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From Middle English tail, taile, taille, tayil, tayl, tayle, tayll, teil, tæȝel, from Old English tæġel, tæġl (“tail”), from Proto-West Germanic *tagl, from Proto-Germanic *taglą (“hair, fiber; hair of a tail”), from Proto-Indo-European *doḱ- (“hair of the tail”), from Proto-Indo-European *deḱ- (“to tear, fray, shred”). Cognate with German Zagel (“tail”), Danish, Faroese, and Icelandic tagl (“tail”), Swedish tagel (“horsehair”), Gothic 𐍄𐌰𐌲𐌻 (tagl, “hair”); also Serbo-Croatian дла̏ка, dlȁka (“single hair”), Slovene dlaka (“single hair”), Northern Kurdish dezî (“cotton, thread”), Sanskrit दशा (daśā, “border, fringe, hem”). In some senses, apparently by a generalization of the usual opposition between head and tail.
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.
TAIL in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 16 boards so far. 23 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 1, 22 May 2026. The most recent board was Day 117, 14 September 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 3 days.
First found by a player on Day 1, 22 May 2026.
Built from these letters
TAIL starts with T and ends with L. Sorted, its letters read AILT - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
Same letters, different word
3 other words use exactly these letters. Worth knowing at the board: an anagram fits a grid the same way.
Words that start TAIL
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 1
Could you have found TAIL?
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 1 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER