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YLEMS
Definition of YLEMS
Wiktionary has no entry for YLEMS itself. This is its base word, YLEM.
noun
In the Big Bang theory, the hot and dense plasma that made up the matter in the cosmos following the initial baryogenesis at an early stage of its expansion and cooling, from which the first atoms formed and photons decoupled. The emission of photons in this phase is regarded as the source of the cosmic microwave background.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
The origin recorded for YLEM.
Resuscitation of Middle English ylem, from Medieval Latin hȳlem, accusative of hȳlē (“matter, the fundamental matter of all things; the matter of the body”) (whence English hyle), a transliteration of Ancient Greek ὕλη (húlē, “wood; material, substance; matter”). The concept of “fundamental matter” – Ancient Greek πρώτη ὕλη (prṓtē húlē) – was propounded by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.). The term ylem was first used in modern English in the paper “The Origin of Chemical Elements”, coauthored by Russian-American theoretical physicist and cosmologist George Gamow (1904–1968), American cosmologist Ralph Asher Alpher (1921–2007) and German-American nuclear physicist Hans Bethe (1906–2005), published 1 April 1948 in Physical Review. Alpher claimed to have found the word “in a large dictionary”, perhaps Webster’s New International Dictionary (2nd ed., 1934), which he referred to in a second 1948 paper (cited below). In a 1968 interview, Gamow also associated ylem with a Hebrew word he did not name; it remains unclear which word he was referring to. The word ylem reappeared in popular books on science following the discovery in 1964–1965 of the cosmic microwave background, which had been predicted in 1948 by Alpher and Robert Herman (1914–1997), and again after the publication of images of the radiation composed from measurements by two satellites, the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) in 1992 and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) in 2003.
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.
YLEMS in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 13 boards so far. 15 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 34, 23 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 102, 30 August 2026. It was on the latest finished board.
First ever to find it
on Day 34, 23 June 2026 - before anyone else in Outlier's history. See the Pioneers
Built from these letters
YLEMS starts with Y and ends with S. Sorted, its letters read ELMSY - 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.
Also seen on Day 34
Could you have found YLEMS?
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 34 - and most players walked straight past it.
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