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Daily · by The New York Times

Strands hints

A themed word search with one spanning answer.

Play Strands

Nothing written up yet for today.

These hints are written by hand rather than pulled from the puzzle automatically, so there is no page on the days nobody has done it. We would rather say that plainly than publish a guess.

In the meantime, the puzzle itself is here , and the tools below narrow it down without spoiling it .

About Strands

A word search where every letter belongs to exactly one answer, all the answers share a theme, and one of them — the spangram — touches both sides of the board and names the theme outright. Find three non-theme words and the game gives you a hint, which makes it the rare daily puzzle with a built-in escape hatch.

How these hints work

Every hint is behind a click, and they run from vaguest to most specific. That ordering is the whole design: a page that opens with the answer is not a hints page, it is a spoiler with extra steps. Open one at a time and stop as soon as you can see the way in.

Where an answer is published at all, it sits behind a second, separate disclosure at the bottom, so you cannot trip over it while reading a hint.

Who makes this puzzle

Strands is created and published by The New York Times. This page is independent commentary and help — it is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced by them, and the puzzle itself lives on their site.

Common questions

Do you publish the Strands answer?
Only when an editor has written one up, and always behind a click so it cannot spoil the puzzle by accident. Hints come first and are ordered from vaguest to most specific — the point of the page is to get you unstuck, not to end the puzzle for you.
Why is today’s page sometimes empty?
Because these are written by hand rather than pulled from the puzzle automatically. This site does not scrape another publisher’s answers on a schedule — so when nobody has written the day up, the page says so instead of guessing.
Are you affiliated with The New York Times?
No. Strands is made and owned by The New York Times. This is an independent page about it, and the link above goes to the real puzzle.
Is there a tool that helps instead of a hint?
Often, yes — and it is usually the better option, because a tool narrows the field without handing you the answer. The relevant ones are linked at the bottom of this page.

Tools that help with this

Narrow the field yourself instead of reading the answer.

Word Finder

Every word your letters can make, filtered by length and pattern.

Word Unscrambler

Pull every real word out of a jumble of letters.

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