Strands
Looking for Saturday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
We are back with another edition of “weekend Strands” which are generally not used to slack off at the office, though are still fun to complete instead. Today was a weird week in that I thought the puzzle was broken, but more on that later on. 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.
Every letter is used once in one of the theme words and spangram. You can connect letters vertically, horizontally and diagonally, and it’s possible to switch directions in the middle of a word. If you’re playing on a touchscreen, double tap the last letter to submit your guess.
If you find three valid words of at least four letters that are not part of the theme, you’ll unlock the Hint button. Clicking this will highlight the letters that make up one of the theme words.
Be warned: You’ll need to be on your toes. Sometimes you’ll need to fill the missing word(s) in a phrase. On other days, the game may revolve around synonyms or homophones. The difficulty will vary from day to day, and the puzzle creators will try to surprise you sometimes.
What Is Today’s Strands Hint?
We will start with the official hint from the NYT itself for the week, and I will follow it up with my own hint that I hope makes things a bit more clear without giving anything away. The official hint is:
Coming Clean
My secondary hint would be:
Routine
See if that does anything for you or not.
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Now we head into the spangram itself, followed by the full list of answers below that. This is one spangram I think you can find relatively quickly. The answer is:
SHOWER
A short one. Here’s where you can find it on the board:
Strands
Now we will move into the full list of answers that weave around the rest of the board:
- SHAMPOO
- CONDITIONER
- RAZOR
- SOAP
- WASHCLOTH
- SPONGE
Strands
So, as you can see these are not just cleaning elements, they are specifically things you use to clean yourself while showering as part of your morning routine. More on that in a second, but I have a question for you guys.
Today I thought the puzzle was broken. I knew I was getting words, but they were not registering and the puzzle would not complete as a result. What I eventually found out is that I had to click the last letter of the word to confirm it was what I was trying to spell. I have literally never had to do this before. I have heard one friend say they always have to do it, and another friend say they’ve never had to. Why is this? Why did mine suddenly switch? What way does your puzzle work?
Anyway, this all started when my first hint was very obviously showing me RAZOR, but it wouldn’t let me put it in. I cleared my cache, I used a different browser, nothing worked until I did the letter clicking thing, which is what I have to do going forward I guess. Very weird.
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