Looking for Thursday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
Friday has arrived and that means there’s one more Strands puzzle you have complete before the weekend. But first…
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.
Be warned: You’ll need to be on your toes.
“Some themes are fill-in-the-blank phrases. They may also be steps in a process, items that all belong to the same category, synonyms or homophones,” The New York Times notes. “Just as she varies the difficulty of Wordle puzzles within a week, [Wordle and Strands editor Tracy] Bennett plans to throw Strands solvers curveballs every once in a while.”
What Is Today’s Strands Hint?
NYT hint first, then my hint:
This or that
And mine is:
Pairs
It’s a really creative puzzle actually.
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Time to start with the spoiler answer section which will begin with the spangram then move to the answers themselves. The spangram is:
OPTIONS
And that is on the board here:
The rest of the answers are:
- SINK
- SWIM
- MAKE
- BREAK
- FEAST
- FAMINE
- DOUBLE
- NOTHING
So, very fun puzzle today as just when you think they might be out of ideas, they do something along these lines. It also sort of makes the puzzle easier once you understand it because you know the other half of the word you’re looking for, unless for some reason you’ve never heard these phrases before.
I actually don’t thing OPTIONS is a good spangram and OPPOSITES feels like it would have made more sense. But I guess that wasn’t going to fit the shape here.
Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
