Looking for Friday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
Welcome to the first weekend of 2025 and there is no reason not to continue with your daily Strands tradition. Make a resolution not to miss any this year.
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.
Every letter is used once in one of the theme words and spangram. You can connect letters vertically, horizontally and diagonally, and it’s possible to switch directions in the middle of a word. If you’re playing on a touchscreen, double tap the last letter to submit your guess.
If you find three valid words of at least four letters that are not part of the theme, you’ll unlock the Hint button. Clicking this will highlight the letters that make up one of the theme words.
Be warned: You’ll need to be on your toes. Sometimes you’ll need to fill the missing word(s) in a phrase. On other days, the game may revolve around synonyms or homophones. The difficulty will vary from day to day, and the puzzle creators will try to surprise you sometimes.
What Is Today’s Strands Hint?
We will start with the official hint and then move on to one that I craft myself to make things a bit more clear. The official hint is
Literary Couples
And my hint is:
No marriages
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Time to start with the spangram, then the full list of answers after that. The spangram is:
BOOKTITLES
And is found on the board here:
The rest of the answers are:
- SOUND
- FURY
- PRIDE
- PREJUDICE
- CRIME
- PUNISHMENT
I was definitely thrown at first because I read Literary Couples to be straight forward, and then got freaked out when I didn’t know any “Fury” couple, but once I found Crime, it became pretty clear. There is only space for three pairs total, and they are some of the most famous books in all of literature. I think War and Peace didn’t make the cut because they don’t do three letter words.
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