Looking for Tuesday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
Time for a midweek play session of Strands, and this time this is probably one of the harder puzzles I have seen from the game. It took a bunch of hints and actually me Googling something to try and figure out some of the rest of the words. But now I have the answers to share, or just some hints if you prefer.
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 today’s puzzle is below along with another one that I think could be even more helpful, if you think you want two.
The official theme hint for today’s Strand puzzle is…
Back and forth
And my own hint? Had to think carefully about this one:
Mirror
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Spoilers follow. Now comes the answers, which are ones that may have you kicking yourself once you figure out the theme. The theme which is then best understood when you find the spangram, which is below:
PALINDROME
That fits into the grid from one side to the other right here:
Here’s the full list of answers:
- KAYAK
- RACECAR
- MADAM
- LEVEL
- CIVIC
- NOON
- ROTATOR
Got a full seven words in today. This one was tricky because PALINDROME for the spangram is not actually a palindrome itself, it just describes the other ones. I had to get two hints to give me NOON and then CIVIC. When I got NOON I thought it might be something to do with time at first, but once I got CIVIC I understood what they were going for.
Next up I thought of the most famous palindrome I remembered from when I was a kid, RACECAR and sure enough, that was on there. I originally spelled MADAME before any of this which got me a hint, but MADAM is the right version of it which I got later. ROTATOR is probably the toughest one on the list as it’s not one you’d normally think of, and it’s pretty long.
So yeah, I found that especially difficult to be honest, and generally speaking I don’t think Strands is all that hard. But today and yesterday were decently tough, and I’m wondering how you did this week.
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