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.
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.”
Time to do the NYT hint and then my own hint after that:
Don’t take the bait
And mine is:
Not anything swimming
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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