Looking for Monday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
Well I will admit I was fully adrift in today’s Strands as it was well beyond my scope of knowledge, but I got it done in the end.
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?
First the official NYT hint and then I will do my own after that. The hint is:
Case-by-case basis
And my hint is:
Accesorize
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
The spangram is next which holds the whole puzzle together, and the answers will be after:
HANDBAGS
And is found on the board here:
The answers are:
- BUCKET
- BARREL
- MESSENGER
- DUFFEL
- CROSSBODY
- TOTE
Here we have the rare “criss cross” format for Tote which only happens when the same word can be gotten using a different path. As for the rest I was lost here. I thought “case by case” meant anything you could put something in, so when I got Bucket and Barrel, which I did not know were types of handbags, that really threw me off. Did you manage to figure it out?
Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
