Looking for Friday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
Well, it’s the new year and I have returned after a couple weeks off the Strands rotation. You’ve been in good hands with my colleagues Paul Tassi and Kris Holt, but I am once again in the driver’s seat. I hope all you Strandistarians had a lovely Christmas and New Year’s and that 2025 is everything you hoped it would be. Let’s solve this puzzle!
Strands is the newest game in the New York Times’ stable of puzzle games. It’s a fun twist on classic word search games. Every day we’re given a new theme and then tasked with uncovering all the words on the grid that fit that theme, including a spangram that spans two sides of the board. One of these words is the spangram which crosses from one side of the grid to another and reveals even more about the day’s theme.
Spoilers ahead.
Today’s Strands Hints
Today’s Theme: Say when . . .
Hint #1: Words of day and night
Hint #2: Not how we quantify, but how we describe
To help you uncover all the words, here are the first two letters of every word, including the spangram.
Remember, spoilers ahead!
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Today’s spangram is: TIMING
Here’s the full list of words:
- DAWN
- NOON
- DAYBREAK
- MORNING
- DUSK
- TWILIGHT
- EVENING
Here’s the completed Strands grid:
Today’s Strands Breakdown
I notice as I look over all these words, just how lovely and evocative each one is. There’s a poetry to the way we speak about times of day. DUSK, DAYBREAK, TWILIGHT. These are great words! The one I’m a little baffled by is TIMING, which doesn’t really sum up what we’re describing all that well. I suppose it does in a literal sense, but it still feels lacking. And it’s short for a spangram! In any case, this wasn’t terribly hard once I’d found DAWN and NOON, but I was hoping the ‘Say when . . .’ theme was actually a reference to the film Tombstone and Val Kilmer’s excellent portrayal of Doc Holliday. Oh well!
How did you do on your Strands today? Let me know on Twitter and Facebook.
Be sure to check out my blog for my daily Wordle guides as well as all my other writing about TV shows, streaming guides, movie reviews, video game coverage and much more. Thanks for stopping by!
