Looking for Saturday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
A bit of a tricky Strands today which sent me in one direction before throwing me somewhere else completely. Which is the spangram, interestingly enough.
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?
Time to do the NYT hint and then my own hint after that:
Don’t take the bait
And mine is:
Not anything swimming
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Now we begin the answer portion of the program which is the spangram and the full list of the other answers, the spangram is:
ITSATRAP
Here it is on the page, and read on:
The answers are:
DECEPTION
TRICK
STRATAGEM
PLOY
LURE
RUSE
DECOY
Well, the puzzle is about deception, and I think it was designed like this on purpose. My first hint I got ended up being LURE, so I thought that between that and BAIT in the hint that this was going to be a fishing-based puzzle, and I know exactly zero fishing terms other than “fishing rod” and “worms.” Those were not there. But once I understand how I had been tricked (which is one of the answers) it came together from there.
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