Looking for Friday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
Hello and good day to you, dearest Strandistas! Strandifiers! Stranded puzzlers who have made your way here to my humble blog for a dash of assistance with today’s grid.
I’m back! I’m on rotation with this guide, trading weeks with my colleagues Paul Tassi and Kris Holt. It’s good to be back. I always enjoy solving these, and today’s was a bit tricky! Let’s dive right in! Hints and answers below . . . .
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. Keep playing, in other words. It’s our collective mission to keep this game alive and get it on the app!
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.
Strands still isn’t on the New York Times games app, but you can play it right here.
What Is Today’s Strands Hint?
Scroll slowly! Just after the hint for today’s Strands puzzle, I’ll reveal what the answer words are.
The official theme hint for today’s Strand puzzle is: Sounds delicious!
Here’s an extra hint to help guide you to the solution: Sounds like food, but isn’t food.
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Spoiler alert! Don’t scroll any further down the page until you’re ready to find out today’s Strands answers.
Today’s Spangram
I’ll first tell you the spangram and show you where that is on the grid. I’ll then tell you the other words and show you how they fit in.
This is your final warning!
Today’s Strands spangram is . . .
HOMOPHONES
Here’s where the Spangram is on the grid:
All Today’s Strands Answers
Before I give you today’s words, I’m going to give you the food they each correspond with as an extra clue phase:
- Meat
- Pear
- Leek
- Mouse
- Thyme
- Cereal
- Chile
- Steak
If you need extra help, spoilers below!
Here’s the full list of words:
- Meet
- Pair
- Leak
- Moose
- Time
- Serial
- Chilly
- Stake
Today’s Strands Breakdown
This was actually trickier than I thought it would be. I figured out they were homophones really quickly, but actually parsing out what each one was took some effort. I guessed STAKE first and then MEET and then looked for HOMOPHONE, having already spotted PHONE earlier.
From here, things got a lot more difficult. I used a couple hints and found LEAK (tried KALE to no avail) and SERIAL using said hints. Then TIME and MOOSE in the corner. Finally CHILLY and that was that. This is one of those puzzles that can work up an appetite!
How did you do on your Strands today? Let me know on Twitter and Facebook.
Be sure to check out my blog for my daily Wordle guides as well as all my other writing about TV shows, streaming guides, movie reviews, video game coverage and much more. Thanks for stopping by!
