Looking for Saturday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
It may a day of rest for some, but that doesn’t mean your brain has to take Sunday off. Play some Strands and see if you can figure out today’s tricky puzzle. 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.
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?
We will start with the official hint of the day from the New York Times and then I’ll give you one of my own for an extra push if theirs is too cryptic.
Cut and color
And mine is:
Blinged out
This one is pretty east to grab right away, I’d say.
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
We are moving into spoiler territory with the actual answers beginning here. We will start with the spangram and move to the rest. The spangram is:
JEWELTONES
Probably the most clever spangram I’ve ever seen because it…forms the shape of a jewel on board! Very fun!
Here are the rest of the answers, which probably will not surprise you
- RUBY
- SAPPHIRE
- GARNET
- AMETHYST
- RUBY
- EMERALD
All pretty common gems/jewels there but it is missing some of the major ones like a diamond. My first clue gave me RUBY and it was off to the races from there. AMETHYST was probably the hardest to remember to spell, but I got there eventually by winding around the letter board.
Easily the most creative part of this is the JEWELTONES spangram. I got JEWEL as a hint early on but I didn’t understand what they were going for until the end. Is this the first spangram that wraps all the way back around? I think it might be.
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