Looking for Friday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
I have returned, oh Strandifiers! It’s been a couple weeks since my last Strands guide, with my colleagues Kris Holt and Paul Tassi taking the baton in our tri-weekly rotation.
It’s good to be back, as I genuinely enjoy this little puzzle game and it’s fun to shake up my daily Wordle with another challenge. So, without further adieu, let’s dive right in!
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.
Strands still isn’t on the New York Times games app, but you can play it right here.
What Is Today’s Strands Hint?
Scroll slowly! Just after the hint for today’s Strands puzzle, I’ll reveal what the answer words are.
The official theme hint for today’s Strand puzzle is: The horror
Here’s an extra hint to help guide you to the solution: Frightening cinema
What Are Today’s Strands Answers?
Spoiler alert! Don’t scroll any further down the page until you’re ready to find out today’s Strands answers.
Today’s Spangram
I’ll first tell you the spangram and show you where that is on the grid. I’ll then tell you the other words and show you how they fit in.
This is your final warning!
Today’s Strands spangram is . . .
SCARYMOVIE
Here’s where the Spangram is on the grid:
All Today’s Strands Answers
I found today’s Strands to be frighteningly easy, if we’re being honest. I’m not even a huge horror movie aficionado, but I’ve seen most of these and certainly heard of all of them.
If you need extra help, spoilers below!
Here’s the full list of words:
- Scream
- Hostel
- Psycho
- Poltergeist
- Halloween
Today’s Strands Breakdown
Today was a pretty easy puzzle all around. I found SCREAM almost instantly and PSYCHO moments later, which made me realize quite quickly we were dealing with horror movies. GEIST popped out from the third corner and from there it was a quick deduction—and a slightly longer search for a ‘P’ that led to POLTERGEIST.
This made the ending of the spangram pretty obvious and after a bit of searching I pieced together SCARYMOVIE. At this point, it was hardly any effort at all to uncover HOSTEL and HALLOWEEN. I never used a hint or even got a word wrong. I’ll take it!
How did you do on your Strands today? Let me know on Twitter and Facebook.
Be sure to check out my blog for my daily Wordle guides as well as all my other writing about TV shows, streaming guides, movie reviews, video game coverage and much more. Thanks for stopping by!
