Looking for Wednesday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
Time for what I would consider the hardest Strands puzzles I’ve done, but if you’re a particular type of classy NYT reader, maybe you won’t have trouble with it. 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?
We will start with the official hint from NYT and I will jump in with one of my own. The official hint is:
All that jazz
And mine is:
No instruments
That will get you started I think.
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Turning to the actual answer, here’s where things get tricky. We will start with the spangram which is hard enough on its own. That is:
SUBGENRE
And you find that here:
Then we have the long list of subgenre answers:
- FUSION
- ACID
- COOL
- RAGTIME
- MODAL
- SWING
- FUNK
- BEBOP
So you can see what I mean. If you are not a jazz afficinado I bet you could barely make progress in this puzzle at all. Either you’re googling the answers, which is why you’re here, or you had to search for “jazz subgenres.” I have at least heart of a few of these butthe main one I know, smooth jazz, wasn’t even on here. It also bothers me when a related word is on the page but doesn’t actually match, like MUSIC today, which did not lead anywhere.
Tough puzzle! Hope I provided some help here today.
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