Looking for Friday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
Welcome back, Strandistarians! It’s my first day writing this guide since three weeks ago, with my colleagues Kris Holt and Paul Tassi taking the proverbial baton on weeks I’m not penning these myself. Yay for teamwork!
This is also the first Strands guide I’m writing after the app joined the New York Times games section/app, having been in beta until this point. Welcome to all you new Strands players, who I refer to as various forms of Stranders, Stranded, Stradistas and so forth.
If you play Worlde, I cover that game every single day so be sure to follow me here on this blog so you never miss a post, all of which are witty, sexy and wonderful. I’m very humble, if you haven’t noticed.
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: Say something
Here’s an extra hint to help guide you to the solution: Words that describe communication
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 . . .
MARINELIFE
Here’s where the Spangram is on the grid:
All Today’s Strands Answers
I’ll give some hints for each word before I show the answers, as some of these were pretty tricky while others were easy as pie. I’ll just give the first two letters of each word so you can try to guess them first:
If you need extra help, spoilers below!
Here’s the full list of words:
- TALK
- SIGN
- UTTER
- SPEAK
- EXPRESS
- TELL
- DECLARE
Today’s Strands Breakdown
Oddly enough, the top half of the grid today was very easy for me, while the bottom half had me perplexed. I snagged TALK almost immediately, followed by SIGN. Then I spotted ARTICULATION—the spangram—almost instantly, before finding UTTER and SPEAK.
After this I was confounded. The X threw me off, as did the two S’s that I knew had to be the end of a word. Once I finally teased out EXPRESS, TELL was obvious enough, but even knowing I had just one word left it took me a bit to figure out DECLARE. All in all, a pretty good puzzle today!
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!
