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:

Gift of the month

And mine is:

Found in jewelry

Today’s NYT Strands Opening Letters

Here are the first two letters of all the words if you don’t want the entire thing just yet.

• TO
• OP
• TU
• DI
• GA
• PE

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:

BIRTHSTONE

Here it is on the page, and read on:

The answers are:

• TOPAZ
• OPAL
• TURQUOISE
• DIAMOND
• GARNET
• PERIDOT

I did not think this was the hardest Strands, as once you know what you’re doing with the birthstones theme, it fills in pretty quickly, though I was sad to see that mine, emerald, did not make the cut. However, I had no idea what the final word I got, peridot, was, so I had to look it up. It is:

"A vibrant olive-green gemstone, often called the "evening emerald" or "gem of the sun," historically associated with protection, fortune, and warding off nightmares."

How many green birthstones do we need? That’s like three! In any case I’m glad I got the OG green gem for mine,.

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