Looking for Thursday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
After yesterday’s tuna-based puzzle, it seems that the New York Times wants us to go a bit easier on us today with a simpler puzzle with less specific knowledge required.
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?
Here is the NYT hint followed by one of my own. The official hint is:
They’re inseparable
And my hint is:
Pairs
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Spoilers begin as I will first list the spangram, then the full roster of answers after. The spangram is:
TOGETHER
And that is found on the board here:
And the answer list:
- MILK
- CEREAL
- SOAP
- WATER
- RHYTHM
- BLUES
- ARTS
- CRAFTS
So, as you can see, this was not exactly the trickiest puzzle in the world, and if you got one word, chances are you probably knew the other to hunt down pretty quick. You will also notice that each pair of words is separated by the spangram with the first word on top and the second on the bottom. Clever set up for a puzzle, even if it was not especially hard.
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