Looking for Thursday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
Well, you are going to have to have a particular set of knowledge today in one specific athletic field. We do get a fun shape out of it though.
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?
First we will start with the official hint from the NYT and then I will give you one of my own. The official hint is:
Ice Packs
And mine is
Puck pushers
That’s probably enough to get you started.
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Now we move on to the answers for the day and spoilers will follow, so be careful. We will start with the spangram and move on to the full list. The spangram is:
HOCKEYTEAM
And here’s where that lies on the board:
And here is the answer list:
- AVALANCHE
- WILD
- JETS
- SHARKS
- DEVILS
- LIGHTNING
So yep, it’s all NHL teams, and today we get to see how much crossover there is between hockey fans and Strands NYT players. I’m guessing some, but perhaps not too many. I grew up in “Hockeytown” watching the Red Wings, so I was bummed to not see them on the board. But that let me find a lot of the others even though LIGHTNING and AVALANCHE were a bit long and tricky.
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