Looking for Wednesday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
We are heading toward the end of the week, and we have a rather silly Strands to go through today. You’ll see what I mean by the end. 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:
Is this some kind of joke?
Mine is
Not a Batman villain
That’s not one of the words, in any case, but on theme.
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:
YOUREKIDDING
And where you find it:
And here are the rest of the answers:
- FOOL
- JESTER
- PRANKSTER
- CLOWN
- BUFFOON
- COMIC
So, it’s a whole lot of names for…someone…funny? Or just an idiot? You can kind of use most of these interchangeably other than maybe JESTER where that’s not really an insult today. PRANKSTER is just a prank-puller. COMIC is doing stand-up.
The insults are really FOOL, CLOWN and BUFFON, but again, not exactly the deepest of cuts in the modern era. Fun puzzle.
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