Looking for Monday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
Tuesday—aka Tyr’s Day, a day named after one of the more fascinating and obscure Norse gods—has landed, and with it another Strands puzzle to solve. Today’s grid was a lot more challenging than the last few, which makes it a lot more interesting to solve as well. I really prefer a challenge to an easy-breezy puzzle, and today delivered (though it’s far from the hardest Strands we’ve seen).
You’ll find hints and clues—and the answers—below. Let’s dive right in!
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.
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: Can you dig it?
Here’s an extra hint to help guide you to the solution: Metal deposits.
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 . . .
HEAVYMETAL
Here’s where the Spangram is on the grid:
All Today’s Strands Answers
Today I’ll give you some extra clues before you get down to the full answers. Three of these words are common precious metals you’ll have heard of and should find easily. The other three are trickier:
- One is a common poison.
- One ends in “IMONY”
- One is a completely straight down vertical word on the grid.
If you need extra help, spoilers below!
Here’s the full list of words:
- Gold
- Silver
- Copper
- Arsenic
- Bismuth
- Antimony
Today’s Strands Breakdown
Oddly enough, the first word I found was ANTIMONY, though I’d never heard the word before. I found IMONY and was thinking ALIMONY or MATRIMONY but nothing worked. Since ANTI is a pretty common prefix, I just went ahead and tried it. When it turned out I was correct, I had to google what it was. Turns out, it’s not somebody who hates money, it’s a silvery-white metal found beneath the earth’s crust. So that made it pretty clear that the “dig” in question was of a mining variety. I mined for more words and found METAL, but that didn’t work. I figured it had to be part of a longer word and sure enough, there was the spangram, HEAVYMETAL.
From here I quickly found GOLD, SILVER, and COPPER, all far easier words than ANTIMONEY. Arsenic came up next, which I always thought of as a poison (aka Arsenic and Old Lace with Cary Grant) and then finally BISMUTH, which I also had never heard of before. My geology skills are clearly not up to snuff.
How did you do on your Strands today? Let me know on Twitter and Facebook.
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