Looking for Thursday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
If there is one thing you want to do after Thanksgiving has stuffed you, it’s take it easy, which is the theme of today’s puzzle.
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?
The official hint will be first and then I will make one of my own. The official hint is:
Give me a break
And my hint is:
Take a load off
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Spangram, then the full list of answers after that. The spangram is:
DOWNTIME
And is found on the board here:
The answers are:
LOUNGE
- CHILL
- PAUSE
- UNWIND
- LUXURIATE
- LOAF
- RELAX
I just kept thinking of my dog through all of these as they are an apt description 19 hours a day. This was generally pretty easy to think of these, I’d say, though some of them like luxuriate through me for a bit of a loop. Relax and chill were the ones I thought of first.
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