Looking for Tuesday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
We have reached the midpoint of the week and we have arrived at a puzzle featuring that is something that sounds pretty good right now. Maybe that your work even has. Let’s find out. 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 New York Times and I will then make one of my own to push things along further. The official hint is:
By the dozen
And my hint is
Unhealthy breakfast
Though unhealthy breakfast usually means a delicious breakfast.
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Let’s start with the spangram and then move on to the actual answers. Spoilers follow! Here is the spangram for today:
DOUGHNUTS
And that is found here in a very winding pattern today:
Now we have the full list of answers below
- CIDER
- GLAZED
- CAKE
- FROSTED
- POWERED
- JELLY
- HOLE
Yep, all the best kinds of donuts. And uh, I guess they are spelling it doughnuts. Is it both? Has donuts been wrong all these years? I trust Dunkin, sorry NYT.
In any case I got CAKE first and I was like “a dozen cakes?” I wondered if these were things usually thought of as a dozen, like Cheaper by the Dozen, but then I realized it was a dozen donuts after I got CIDER. After that the rest of the puzzle was pretty easy, and no word unscramblers needed today.
Hope you enjoyed it and got some help here. See you tomorrow.
Follow me on Twitter, Threads, YouTube, and Instagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.