Looking for Thursday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
I always love my tricky Strands clues, but this one has a tricky spangram as well that may lead you in the wrong direction. We’ll see.
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.
Play Puzzles & Games on Forbes
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?
The NYT hint is first and then I will make one of my own.
Step on it
And my hint is:
Not automotive
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
The answers are below but we will start with the spangram, then do the full list after that:
FLOORING
And here is where you find that on the board:
And the answers are:
- HARDWOOD
- LAMINATE
- LINOLEUM
- TERRAZZO
- CONCRETE
Was tricked into thinking this was some sort of car-based puzzle, which was of course the point. But finding the spangram of flooring did not really dissuede that notion, as I started looking for words like accelerate, but then I figured it out when linoleum came up. The rest is history. How did you do?
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
