The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
TALE
Definition of TALE
noun
A rehearsal of what has occurred; narrative; discourse; statement; history; story.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From Middle English tale, from Old English talu (“tale, series, calculation”), from Proto-West Germanic *talu, from Proto-Germanic *talō (“calculation, number”), from Proto-Indo-European *del- (“to reckon, count”). Cognate with West Frisian taal (“speech, language”), Dutch taal (“language, speech”), German Zahl (“number, figure”), Danish tale (“speech”), Icelandic tala (“speech, talk, discourse, number, figure”), Latin dolus (“guile, deceit, fraud”), Ancient Greek δόλος (dólos, “wile, bait”), Albanian ndjell (“to lure”), Northern Kurdish til (“finger”), Old Armenian տող (toł, “row”). Related to tell, talk.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
4 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
3rd
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
8.9%
of traced words share this origin (2,636)
How it is built
Same root, TALE · 1 relative in the game
Its etymology also names Ancient Greek, Danish, Dutch, Icelandic, Latin.
Every Proto-Indo-European word → · The Word DNA of OUTLIER →
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
TALE in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 15 boards so far. 24 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 23, 12 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 148, 15 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 3 days.
First ever to find it
on Day 23, 12 June 2026 - before anyone else in Outlier's history. See the Pioneers
Built from these letters
TALE starts with T and ends with E. Sorted, its letters read AELT - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
Same letters, different word
5 other words use exactly these letters. Worth knowing at the board: an anagram fits a grid the same way.
Words that start TALE
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 23
Could you have found TALE?
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