Looking for Thursday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
Alright I will admit this is probably the single hardest Strands that I’ve done since I started playing, not that the game is all that old at this point. Some days it’s kind of a joke, other days? I am baffled for a good long while, and if you’re here, maybe you are too.
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?
Scroll slow. The official hint for the puzzle can be found below and I am going to invent a second one that helps you further after that.
The official theme hint for today’s Strand puzzle is…
Animal sounds
And my own hint? I guess I’m perhaps being overly helpful here but…
Not literal sounds
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Spoilers follow. Here are the answers, starting with the spangram and then moving into the full list of all the puzzle worlds. This may also be a word you have to look up by itself if you don’t actually know what it is.
HOMOPHONES
That fits into the grid from one side to the other right here:
Now we have the full list of answers which were difficult, I have to say.
- WAIL
- GRISLY
- MUSCLE
- MOUSSE
- CHORAL
- DEAR
- HOARSE
So yeah, I was pretty lost on this for a good long while. My first hint gave me WAIL, but even knowing what the idea was from there, words that sound like animals but are spelled differently, that was still extremely hard.
More hints got me MOUSSE, which I kept trying to spell MOUSE with initially. Then GRISLY. Then I eventually got the other ones and the spangram, HOMOPHONES was actually the literal last thing I got. I suppose I didn’t need it with the theme all figured out.
I had a tough time with this one, so if you did too, don’t feel bad. It happens to us all.
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