Strands Answers Today & Hints

What is Strands?

Strands is a daily themed word search from The New York Times. Each puzzle is a grid of 48 letters arranged in six columns and eight rows. Hidden inside are a handful of theme words connected by a single idea, plus one special answer called the spangram that describes the theme itself. Your job is to find every word and use every letter on the board.

The game entered beta in March 2024 and became a permanent part of the NYT Games lineup later that year, alongside Wordle and Connections. It is free to play once a day on the web and in the NYT Games app.

How to play Strands

At the top of the board you'll see a short, often punny clue to the theme, such as "On the slopes" or "Kitchen duty". Drag or tap through adjacent letters to form a word. Letters can connect in any direction: up, down, sideways or diagonally, and a word can bend and change direction as many times as it needs to.

When you find a theme word, it locks in and turns blue. When you find the spangram, it turns yellow. Valid words that aren't part of the theme don't count as answers, but they do build towards a hint. The puzzle is finished when every letter on the board belongs to a found word.

What is a spangram?

The spangram is the key to every Strands puzzle. It is a word or phrase that sums up the theme, and it always touches two opposite sides of the board, either left to right or top to bottom. Because it is usually the longest answer, finding it early is the fastest way to understand what the other words have in common.

How hints work in Strands

Strands has a built-in hint system. Every time you find three valid non-theme words of four letters or more, the hint meter fills and you can use it to highlight the letters of one theme word. The first tap shows which letters belong to the word; a second hint on the same word reveals the order. You can save hints and use several in a row, and using them does not break your streak.

When does the new Strands come out?

A new Strands unlocks at midnight in your local time zone. We publish hints and answers as soon as the puzzle is available and keep every previous day in the archive above.

Strands strategy and tips

1. 1Decode the clue before you swipeSay the clue out loud and list what it could mean. "On the slopes" might be skiing, mountains or even angles. Narrowing the theme tells you what word lengths to look for.
2. 2Hunt for the spangram firstLook for long words that start on one edge. Finding the spangram explains the theme and removes a large chunk of letters from the board.
3. 3Clear the cornersLetters in corners have only three neighbours, so the words that use them are heavily constrained. Solving a corner often reveals an entire theme word.
4. 4Bank hints with short wordsIf you are stuck, spend a minute finding easy four-letter words. Three of them earn a hint, and you can save hints for the hardest word.
5. 5Watch for plurals and phrasesTheme answers can be plural or two words joined together. If a word seems one letter short, check whether an S or a second word follows.

Common theme types

Official Strands resources

GameAnswers.com is an independent site and is not affiliated with The New York Times. To play the game itself, use the official sources below.

If you like Strands, try these

More daily puzzles with their own hint hubs, for when one isn’t enough.

Wordle hintsGuess the five-letter word in six tries.Connections hintsSort 16 words into four hidden groups.Spelling Bee hintsMake words from seven letters, always using the centre.Word Salad hintsFind every themed word in a 4x4 letter grid.