Looking for Wednesday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
This is one of the single hardest Strands that I’ve done since I started playing, not that the game is all that old at this point. I’m serious, I was clueless.
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…
Good times ahead
And my own hint is
Same word
Yeah you’ll see, it’s weird.
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.
AFTERPARTY
Here’s what that looks like on the board:
And here are the rest of the answers
- CRASHER
- FAVOR
- BOAT
- POOPER
- HEARTY
- ANIMAL
Yeah okay so you get it, right? The word “party” is attached to all of these so things like party CRASHER, party ANIMAL, party HEARTY. Wait party hearty? What the hell is that?
This took probably the single most amount of hints I’ve ever used in a puddle as I had no idea what the connection was until like five words in, as the clue was useless, and only in hindsight do I get it now.
Really tough on today, hopefully you beat it with my help here.
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