Looking for Thursday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
Time for a Sunday version of Strands to start the week. Do you technically start the week on Sunday or Monday? I know the “right” answer, but I think everyone views it differently. Anyway, what were we talking about? Strands! Here are some hints and answers. 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?
Scroll slowly! I’ll post the official hint here, then make up a second one that is not an actual word in the puzzle, but still may be helpful.
The official theme hint for today’s Strand puzzle is…
Outside Interests
Alright I’ll do my own hint too:
Weather
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Spoilers follow. It’s your last chance to turn back before we get to the answers themselves. I’ll do the spangram first and then we can get to the full list of solutions to the other words
FORECAST
That fits into the grid from one side to the other right here:
Now, as for the answers themselves, here are the rest of them:
- BLIZZARD
- SNOW
- HAIL
- STORM
- RAIN
- SUNSHINE
- TORNADO
Here’s how they fit:
So, you have a tiny bit of nice weather and some very, very bad weather in there. I did actually end up using a hint on this one, as when I got to the STORM, HAIL, RAIN ones I couldn’t quite get it without doing a few four word hints, one of which gave me HAIL, which was enough to separate the other two.
TORNADO was extremely given that it’s just the entire bottom line backward, and once I got that, I understand that “Outside Interests” was going to be referring to weather, so some of the other words, including the spangram, followed shortly after. But yeah I used a hint so not exactly a perfect run there for me today.
Maybe you did better than me, or if not, that may be why you’re here. See you tomorrow for another puzzle, and if you’re looking for yesterday’s, you can find that here.
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