Looking for Tuesday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
After election day, how are you feeling? Cheer yourself up or celebrate with some Strands.
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?
First we will start with the official hint from the NYT and then I will give you one of my own that I think will help you along further. The official hint is:
Strumming right along…
And mine is
Hit those notes
I think that’s probably enough to get you started.
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Now we move on to the answers for the day and spoilers will follow, so be careful. We will start with the spangram and move on to the full list. The spangram is:
STRINGY
And here’s where that lies on the board:
The rest of the answers are:
- VIOLIN
- GUITAR
- SITAR
- UKULELE
- HARP
- BANJO
- MANDOLIN
So the idea is that they’re all string instruments, and this is another puzzle where the spangram could have been the main hint as it doesn’t give too much away. A few didn’t make the cut here like bass or cello, but the rest are ones that are pretty well known, depending on your taste in music and country of origin. Once you get GUITAR I think you knew where the reset of this puzzle was going.
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