Looking for Thursday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
Just because it’s the weekend, that doesn’t mean Strands takes the day off. There’s a brand new game to play, and we’ve got all the hints and answers you could need to solve it if you want a little boost while you play.
How To Play Strands
The New York Times’ Strands puzzle is a play on the classic word search. It’s in beta for now, which means it’ll only stick around if enough people play it every day.
There’s a new game of Strands to play every day. The game will present you with a six by eight grid of letters. The aim is to find a group of words that have something in common, and you’ll get a clue as to what that theme is. When you find a theme word, it will remain highlighted in blue.
You’ll also need to find a special word called a spangram. This tells you what the words have in common. The spangram links two opposite sides of the board. While the theme words will not be a proper name, the spangram can be a proper name. When you find the spangram, it will remain highlighted in yellow.
Be warned: You’ll need to be on your toes.
“Some themes are fill-in-the-blank phrases. They may also be steps in a process, items that all belong to the same category, synonyms or homophones,” The New York Times notes. “Just as she varies the difficulty of Wordle puzzles within a week, [Wordle and Strands editor Tracy] Bennett plans to throw Strands solvers curveballs every once in a while.”
What Is Today’s Strands Hint?
Scroll slowly! I’ll post the Strands hint for today, then my own hint, then the full list of words after that.
The official theme hint for today’s Strand puzzle is…
Grow Up
Alright I’ll do my own hint too:
Aging
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Spoilers follow. It’s your last chance to turn back before the answers start rolling in. We’ll start with the spangram itself, which may be enough to get your started, but if you want more words, you can keep going after this.
PARENTHOOD
That fits into the grid from one side to the other right here:
The rest of the Strands words for today to fill in the other blanks are:
- BABY
- ADULT
- FOAL
- SHEEP
- TADPOLE
- FROG
- FOAL
- HORSE
So here’s the finished puzzle:
While I did get this perfectly with no hints today, I will admit to getting thrown for a bit here. I got ADULT then BABY after PARENTHOOD, so I thought it might be different family members you have growing up, so I began looking for mother, father, sister, brother, things like that. But I found nothing. I got HORSE, thinking it would be a hint word, but it wasn’t.
Then I started getting what they were doing here. HORSE paired with FOAL and the rest was history. It’s just different species with the baby and adult versions of them, though I suppose humans are just…baby and adult, hence their place on the list. I certainly get both the GROW UP hint and PARENTHOOD spangram now.
Curious how everyone did this week as I think this was trickier than most. Maybe you got lucky and figured it out relatively quick like me, or maybe you needed some hints, which is why you’re here. See you tomorrow here on my page!
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