The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
XYLOPHAGOUS
Definition of XYLOPHAGOUS
adjective
Feeding on wood. (of insects etc.)
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Other senses
XYLOPHAGOUS carries 4 further meanings.
adjective
Feeding on or obtaining nutrition from wood.
“a xylophagous beetle; xylophagous fungi.”
Wood-eating; habitually feeding upon wood; lignivorous, as an insect. See Cis (with cut).
Perforating and destroying as if eating timber, as a mollusk or a crustacean.
adjective
Eating, boring in, or destroying, wood; -- said especially of certain insect larvæ, crustaceans, and mollusks.
Where it comes from
From xylo- (“wood”) + -phagous (“eating”).
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
How it is built
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
XYLOPHAGOUS in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 10 boards so far. 85 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 65, 24 July 2026. The most recent board was Day 123, 20 September 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 18 days.
First ever to find it
on Day 65, 24 July 2026 - before anyone else in Outlier's history. See the Pioneers
Built from these letters
XYLOPHAGOUS starts with X and ends with S. Sorted, its letters read AGHLOOPSUXY - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. O appears more than once. It uses X - among the least common letters in written English.
Words that start XYLOPHA
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Could you have found XYLOPHAGOUS?
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 65 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER