Looking for Thursday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
It’s Friday at last, as well as the last day of May. On top of that, this is my final Strands post for the nonce. I’ll be back in two weeks, but I’m passing the proverbial baton to Kris Holt, who will then pass it on to Paul Tassi and then back to me.
Let’s do this Strands, shall we? It’s a fun one today!
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. Keep playing, in other words. It’s our collective mission to keep this game alive and get it on the app!
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: On the yellow brick road
Here’s an extra hint to help guide you to the solution: Two hints:
- For the spangram, yesterday’s clue will do just fine.
- For the grid’s theme, if it wasn’t already obvious, Things you’ll find in and on the way to Oz, though I’d be ‘lion’ if I told you there’d be any large cats on this grid.
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 . . .
RUBYSLIPPERS
Here’s where the Spangram is on the grid:
All Today’s Strands Answers
Once again, I’ll give individual hints for the five remaining words before I give the answers:
- The great and powerful.
- If he only had a brain!
- “I gotta go Julia, we got cows!”
- Sleepy time.
- Where bluebirds fly.
If you need extra help, spoilers below!
Here’s the full list of words:
- Wizard
- Scarecrow
- Twister
- Poppies
- Rainbow
Today’s Strands Breakdown
This wasn’t the most challenging Strands ever but I admit that even though I knew right away what I was looking for, a lot of these were tricky to find. I got WIZARD almost instantly, but then I was stumped for a spell. SCARECROW came next, followed by TWISTER (which threw me for a loop, as I always thought of it as a tornado). At this point, I could see where the spangram had to be but it took me some mental gymnastics to really parse out RUBYSLIPPERS. I kept seeing BURY’ and it just didn’t materialize for me until I really pondered.
At this point, the final two words were pretty easy. POPPIES and RAINBOW and done. There’s no place like home. I am a little sad that only the Scarecrow got a mention here. No Dorothy? No Cowardly Lion? No Tin Man?
All of this reminds me that we’re finally getting a film version of Wicked (I loved the off-broadway version I saw and I’ve read all the fantastic books). It looks great, and has such talented singers in the lead roles. Check out the trailer:
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!
