The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
TREPAN
Definition of TREPAN
noun
A tool used to bore through rock when sinking shafts.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Other senses
TREPAN carries 4 further meanings.
noun
An instrument for boring; a borer.
noun
The name given by the French to a boring-tool used for sinking wells and mining shafts to great depths and sometimes of great dimensions.
noun
An instrument, in the form of a crown-saw, used by surgeons for removing parts of the bones of the skull, in order to relieve the brain from pressure or irritation. The trephine is an improved form of this instrument. See cuts under crown-saw and trephine.
To perforate by a trepan, especially by the surgical trepan; operate on with a trepan.
Where it comes from
Borrowed into Middle English from Old French trepan, from Latin trepanum, from Ancient Greek τρύπανον (trúpanon, “auger, borer”). Doublet of trephine.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
4 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
2nd
of 58 source languages in OUTLIER
12.6%
of traced words share this origin (3,660)
branch · 12.6% of traced words
How it is built
Same root, TREPAN · 2 relatives in the game
TREPAN in a sentence
“From the distracted and despairing man whom love and longing trepan from the lover under passion’s ban the prisoner of transport and distraction from this Kamar al-Zaman son of Shahriman to the peerless one of the fair Houris the pearl-union to the Lady Budur daughter of King Al Ghayur”
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
TREPAN in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 63 boards so far. 167 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 10, 30 May 2026. The most recent board was Day 144, 11 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 1 day.
First ever to find it
on Day 10, 30 May 2026 - before anyone else in Outlier's history. See the Pioneers
Built from these letters
TREPAN starts with T and ends with N. Sorted, its letters read AENPRT - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
Words that mean much the same
Near-synonyms of TREPAN. Not interchangeable at the board - the grid decides that - but close in meaning.
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 TREPAN
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 10
Could you have found TREPAN?
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 10 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER