Looking for Sunday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here.
Strands is back to start your week and you can see how you fare in today’s somewhat tricky puzzle. 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?
The NYT hint will come first and then I will make one of my own to push things further. The official hint is:
Gnaw-It-Alls
And my hint is:
Some pets, most not
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Time for the answer portion of our program, where I will start with the spangram and then do the full list of answers. The spangram is
RODENTS
And that is found on the board here:
The rest of the answer list is:
- HAMSTER
- PORCUPINE
- MUSKRAT
- SQUIRREL
- CHINCHILLA
So, you see what I mean. You can have a HAMSTER and a CHINCHILLA as pets, but MUSKRATS, SQUIRRELS and PORCUPINES? You have to be a special kind of pet-owner to actually take one of those in, but I know at least some people have done so. Squirrels more than porcupines, I’d guess. I was looking around for MOUSE or GERBIL but I guess they did not fit on the board. Honestly I didn’t even realize a porcupine was a rodent, but I guess that does make sense.
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