Looking for Friday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
It’s the weekend and time to continue to play Strands, and you don’t even have to slack off work to do so. This is one of the strangest puzzles I’ve ever seen. 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 NYT hint and then move on to one of my own, as I think you’ll need the help this week. The official hint is:
Not just for poking
Mine is
Look for a straight, diagonal line
Not really a theme hint but more of a “on the board” puzzle hint there.
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
We will begin with the spangram in the answer portion here, where spoilers follow. Then I will post all the answers below that. Here is the spangram:
STICKS
And where you find it:
And here are the rest of the answers:
- HOCKEY
- SWIZZLERS
- LICORICE
- MEMORY
- CINNAMON
- CONTROL
I told you this was a weird, hard puzzle, and I stand by that. These are all different kinds of sticks, half of them being food, half of them being something else. We have SWIZZLER, CINAMMON and LICORICE for the food, HOCKEY for a sport and MEMORY for PCs.
I don’t really know what a CONTROL stick is supposed to be, but I guess they’re going for something you use to pilot something, or one of those video game accessories that almost no games us anymore outside of maybe flight simulators. I essentially did not even understand the theme until the last two words here, and I used a ton of hints. What about you?
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