How to Win at Strands, the Newest Word Game From the NYT

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Strands, the New York Times word search game still in beta, is now on its 10th puzzle. The first two or three puzzles were relatively easy: solvers complained that the hint gave away too much, and the game wasn’t very challenging. But you and I know better, right? As I noted last week , the creators of the puzzle have hinted that it will become much more difficult. So it started, and wow, people got angry.

Before you read further, please know that this article includes spoilers and direct answers for the March 13, 2024 Strands game . Here’s a link to today’s game so you can suffer along with the rest of us. Then come back and we’ll discuss what you just experienced. (And if you catch up later, here’s a fan-made archive so you can play the March 13 game, even if you’re reading this from the future.)

 Strands No. 10 “A thousand subscribers”🔵🔵🟡🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵

Okay, friends. We need to discuss something about how the puzzle is designed and what expectations and assumptions are built into it. This puzzle is new, so it’s okay if you haven’t figured it all out yet! We are learning together.

Think of the “topic” as a crossword puzzle clue.

If you’re a crossword solver, especially NYT crosswords, you’ll have a huge advantage over everyone else when it comes to understanding complex Strands topics. Remember, in Strands, “today’s topic” is the prompt you get when you open the page. I think of it as the title of a puzzle.

Here’s what you need to know: The subject is the hint for the spagram (yellow word or phrase) . The spangram, in turn, describes what the blue words have in common.

Sometimes the topic is a fairly simple clue: e.g.

  • “Mark my words” was accompanied by PUNCTUATION of the spanggram. (Blue words: COMMA, APOSTROPHE…)

  • “She’ll be delighted” accompanied the CINDERELLA spam. (Blue words: PUMPKIN, SLIPPER…)

  • “I need a dip!” went with the spanggram GUACAMOLE. (Blue words: AVOCADO, JALAPENO…)

Simple, right? This is because they start off easy with us. There were more difficult ones:

  • To put it mildly, these were EUPHEMISM.

  • The “Decree of the Ruler” was MEASUREMENTS. (This is “ruler” as a measure, not king)

I believe this is a word search designed for crossword puzzle enthusiasts. Personally, this is what I’m here for: I love the NYT crosswords, especially the ones like Thursday and Sunday, which are full of clever themes and wordplay. For example, here are a few crossword clues that made me laugh last week:

This is what happens when “A Thousand Followers” becomes a GRAND FINALE, as in the March 13th Strands thread. Grand is a thousand, and final is final. The riddle asks us to find the endings of the phrase “GRAND ____”.

Expect empty categories to be filled

Now that we’ve got that covered, blue words are sometimes a pun based on a theme/spangram. As in Connections , words do not always group together because they are members of a category or synonyms of each other. We saw all sorts of tricky combinations there, including homophones and anagrams. (Remember ATE, FOR, Too, WON as homophones of the numbers 8, 4, 2, 1?)

So what kind of wordplay can we expect in The Strands? (Thankfully, anagrams don’t actually work.) Recall that the New York Times hinted that we might see “fill in the blanks” someday. This has happened twice already. Just a few days ago we had this riddle:

  • Topic: FRAGILE: Handle with care.

  • Spangram: BREAKABLE

  • Words: HEART, SILENCE, PROMISE, BREAD, MOLD, SWEAT, RECORD.

Take it? They all refer to idioms in which we “break” something: you can break bread with someone, or break their heart, or you can sound like a broken record.

The reason the March 13th puzzle is so challenging is that it uses both a crossword-style clue for the spagrams and a Connections-style fill-in-the-blank for the blue words. I’ll ruin everything here, since you’ve already been warned:

  • Topic: “A thousand subscribers”

  • Spangram: GRAND FINALE

  • Words: [big] PRIZE, [big] JURY, [Big] CENTRAL, [Grand] CANYON, [big] HELMET, [Big] RAPIDS, [big] PIANO.

Take it? Take it??? Sorry, I was amused when I realized this. It also took me a long time to solve this problem because it is a difficult puzzle! Understanding that “aha!” requires several logical steps. moments.

Either way, people who were expecting a simple word search got angry . Here’s a Reddit thread full of complaints that the spagram was off-topic or that the word “final” should have been a word in its own right. (It could be, but then you wouldn’t get the cute GRAND+ [synonym for ending] construction.)

Many complaints about this and other challenging puzzles come from non-native English speakers, and these are perfectly valid criticisms. (A lot of people were stumped by GADZOOKS the other day—you had to read comics from a certain era for it to even register as a word.) Complex word puzzles aren’t always accessible to everyone, which is both the problem and the whole point of the puzzle. If you solve something by turning to your brain for some obscure knowledge or connecting two concepts in an unconventional way, it’s an amazing feeling and makes the whole puzzle worth it!

I’m impressed with Strands (and have high hopes for it coming out of beta) because it can run the gamut from simple to diabolical, depending on how sadistic the designer is feeling that day. Having an “aha” moment in a difficult situation is the kind of thrill I live for (I don’t live a very interesting life). Bottom line: This is not an easy puzzle. If you know and love wordplay tricks in crosswords and connections, you’ll love Strands. Just don’t expect it to be easy.

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