Looking for Wednesday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
I believe I set a speed record for how fast I solved the puzzle this week, so we’ll see if you fare better or not. If it’s not your day, I have some hints for you coming up. But first…
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.
Every letter is used once in one of the theme words and spangram. You can connect letters vertically, horizontally and diagonally, and it’s possible to switch directions in the middle of a word. If you’re playing on a touchscreen, double tap the last letter to submit your guess.
If you find three valid words of at least four letters that are not part of the theme, you’ll unlock the Hint button. Clicking this will highlight the letters that make up one of the theme words.
Be warned: You’ll need to be on your toes. Sometimes you’ll need to fill the missing word(s) in a phrase. On other days, the game may revolve around synonyms or homophones. The difficulty will vary from day to day, and the puzzle creators will try to surprise you sometimes.
What Is Today’s Strands Hint?
We will start with the official hint and then move on to one that I craft myself to make things a bit more clear. The official hint is
No Dice!
And my hint is:
Bored Games
Yes I spelled that right, you’ll see.
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Scroll slowly, as this is where the answers being. We will first start with the spangram and then move on to the full list of answers after that. The spangram is:
PARTYGAMES
And here is where you find that on the board:
Now we move on to the full list of answers now that we full know the theme:
- CHARADES
- MAFIA
- TELEPHONE
- TWISTER
- CELEBRITY
Look I am old but I’m not that old, so do people still play this stuff anymore? This reminds of something like, the Brady Bunch would do on game night. Now we do cool things like play Settlers of Catan or Xbox. Okay maybe not cool things, but whatever.
I got MAFIA first today, so I thought maybe this was mobster themed as “no dice!” sounds like something a gangster would say. Instead these are all games that…don’t use dice, so there we go.
The rest were easy to get. I don’t actually know what CELEBRITY is as a game? Is that where you just like name movies they’re in and people guess who you’re talking about? I feel like I’m missing something. Anyway, odd puzzle.
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