Very hard Strands today as the NYT wants you to work for it with a clue that is kind of nonsense unless you find the Spangram right away. Which you probably will not.

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?

First we will start with the official hint from the NYT and then I will give you one of my own that I think will help you along further. The official hint is:

___ a ___

And mine is

(R)ake a ____

I think that’s probably enough to get you started.

What Are Today’s Strands Answers?

Now we move on to the answers for the day and spoilers will follow, so be careful. We will start with the spangram and move on to the full list. The spangram is:

TAKETHAT

And here’s where that lies on the board:

The answers are:

• SELFIE
• HIKE
• BREATHER
• NUMBER
• GANDER
• CHANCE
• HINT

I mean, what is that hint? It makes sense in hindsight once you realize that everything is “Take a ___” but how you are supposed to get there? That’s a lot of hints needed. There aren’t even four dashes to tell you that the words is four letters. Slopily done, NYT, I didn’t love this puzzle. If you didn’t either, I hope this helped you.

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