Looking for Monday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
Time for some more Strands, and this is an interesting week as it contains what I would consider a generally pretty easy puzzle minus one of the hardest words I’ve seen to date. 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.
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 actual hint that the game gives you at the start and I will make up one of my own to further things along a little more. The official hint is:
Pour it on
My own hint will be:
Bottled
I think that works for all them? I guess we’ll find out.
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Now we head into the actual answer portion of the puzzle with the spangram first and then the full list of answers after that. The spangram for the week is:
CONDIMENT
Here’s where that is laid out on the page this time:
Now we will run down through the full list of answers below:
- AIOLI
- SRIRACHA
- KETCHUP
- MUSTARD
- MAYO
- TZATZIKI
Yeah okay you may have figured out which word I had some trouble with. SRIRACHA was hard enough to spell on its own, but TZATZIKI? I can’t even spell it on my first two tries right now still. I also do not know what it is. If you don’t either, here you go:
“Tzatziki is a creamy cucumber yogurt dip (or sauce) made from simple ingredients including strained yogurt (or Greek yogurt), cucumbers, garlic, and sometimes fresh herbs such as dill or mint. Traditionally, it is made from strained sheep or goat’s milk yogurt, but a full-fat Greek yogurt works just fine in this dip.”
Truly I do not have any idea what this is, and I have never willingly eaten it. Granted my palate and food knowledge is pretty limited, but this one through me for a loop. I feel like maybe I should have titled this article “What condiment has two Zs in it?” to get what people may be searching for. Yikes.
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