Looking for Thursday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
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.
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: Pardon my French!
Here’s an extra hint to help guide you to the solution:
The attaché ate his soufflé in the cul-de-sac waiting for his rendezvous.
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.
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 . . .
LOANWORDS
Here’s where the Spangram is on the grid:
Once you find the Spangram it’s typically pretty easy to find the rest of the day’s words, but I had trouble with a couple of these. Here’s the full list:
- Beret
- Chauffeur
- Bureau
- Aperitif
- Chic
- Liaison
The official “theme” was pretty straightforward today, which made this easier. What made it more difficult is that French words are hard to spell. I swear, every word in English that is a “loan word” from French, is just more difficult for me to spell.
I wasn’t sure at first, but I started looking for French words and came across beret pretty quickly. I started brainstorming other French words that we use commonly in English and there, right below the first word, found chauffeur, which I still have trouble spelling even after finding it and typing it out once. Bureau came next, and now I’d sealed off the entire left side of the grid.
I remembered finding the word ‘fire’ earlier and that made me think aperitif which, lo and behold, was indeed right there. At this point the letters ‘SDROW’ were al blocked off in a row between the other words, so I knew this had to be the end of the spangram. WORDS in other words. The beginning? Pretty quickly I found LOAN and slapped the two together to get LOANWORDS. That’s actually one word, not two. I didn’t know that. I found chic next which made my liaison discovery rather simple.
No cliche in the bunch, which I thought for sure would be in there. C’est la vie. Still, a pretty fun Strands to puzzle out today! Bon voyage, Stranditos!
How did you do on your Strands today? Let me know on Twitter and Facebook.
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