by Strands
Looking for Sunday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
I set a speed record this week for how quickly I solved the puzzle, so we’ll see if you do better or not. But if that’s not the case, that’s no problem and I have some tips for you. But first…
How to play strands
The New York Times’ Strands puzzle is a game with the classic word search. It’s currently in beta, meaning it will only survive if enough people play it every day.
There’s a new game of it Strands play every day. The game presents you with a grid of six by eight letters. The goal is to find a group of words that have something in common, and you’ll get an idea of what that theme is. When you find a theme word, it will remain highlighted in blue.
You will also need to find a special word called a spangram. This tells you what the words have in common. The spangram connects two opposite sides of the board. Although the theme words are not a proper noun, the spangram can be a proper noun. When you find the spangram, it will remain highlighted in yellow.
Each letter is used once in one of the theme words and spangram. You can connect letters vertically, horizontally and diagonally, and it is 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 will unlock the Hint button. Clicking on this will highlight the letters that make up one of the theme words.
Be warned: you need to be alert. Sometimes you have to fill in the missing words in a sentence. On other days the game may revolve around synonyms or homophones. The difficulty varies from day to day and the puzzle makers will sometimes try to surprise you.
What’s today’s Strands hint?
We’ll start with the official hint and then move on to a hint I came up with to make things a bit clearer. The official hint is
In a(n)…
And my tip is:
Just a moment
What are today’s answers?
Time to start with the spangram, and then the full list of answers. The spangram is:
LITTLE TIME
And can be found here on the board:
Strands
The full list of answers is:
- check
- SECOND
- MINUTE
- FLASH
- JIFFY
- DIRECTLY
- MOMENT
Strands
Once I realized that they would all be cases of time, everything else fell into place, even if it was the spangram itself that came last. Honestly, that spangram in itself would have been a pretty clever hint. Some are actual units of time, such as MINUTE or SECOND, but anything beyond that will not be a ‘small time’, such as an hour. Others are more phrases, as in a TICK, which I’m pretty sure is British, and in a JIFFY, which I’m pretty sure is from the ’50s.
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