Looking for Friday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
I am not exaggerating when I say that this has one of the wildest words I have ever seen in a puzzle here, and I would be shocked if even 1% of players got it. Which maybe why you are here.
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 especially. The official hint is:
Seeing double
Mine is:
Two in a row
Hard to think of a second one this time, admittedly.
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:
LETTERS
And where you find it:
And the answers:
- COMMITTEE
- COFFEE
- BALLOON
- SUCCEED
- WHIPPOORWILL
What the hell is a WHIPPOORWILL? Even spell check has no idea here. I thought this was Whirlpool but you can’t make that work, and you need double double letters for this puzzle here. So, after looking it up, of course, a Whippoorwill is a bird. A bird I have never heard of in my life despite living in North America where it resides. Native Americans said that hearing its cry was a death omen, and I certainly wanted to die after trying this many combinations of letters. Wow.
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