strings
Are you looking for hints, charts and answers for Saturday series? You can find them here:
Today may be a day of rest for some, but that doesn’t mean your brain has to take a Sunday off. Play some Strands games and see if you can solve today’s tricky puzzle. But first:
How to play Strands
The New York Times’ classic word search puzzle game is in beta right now, which means it won’t last unless enough people play it every day.
There is a new game called Strands that you can play every day. The game will present you with a six by eight grid of letters. The goal is to find a group of words that have something in common, and you will get an idea about the theme of that group. When you find a theme word, it will remain highlighted in blue.
You will also need to find a special word called a spangram. This tells you what the words have in common. A spangram connects two opposite sides of a board. Although the subject words would not be a proper name, a SPANgram could be a proper name. When you find a spangram, it will still be highlighted in yellow.
Be warned: you’ll need to be on your toes.
“Some of the topics are fill-in-the-blank phrases. They can also be steps in a process, items that all belong to the same category, or synonyms or homonyms,” notes The New York Times. “Just as the difficulty of Wordle puzzles varies over the course of a week, [Wordle and Strands editor Tracy] Bennett plans to throw curve balls at Strands’ solutions from time to time.
What is today’s threading tip?
We’ll start with today’s official tip from the New York Times and then I’ll give you one of my own for an extra boost if theirs is too vague.
Cut and color
And mine is:
Blinged out
I would say this is too oriental to grab immediately.
What are the answers to today’s branches?
We’re moving into spoiler territory as the actual answers start here. We’ll start with the spangram and move on to the rest. The spangram is:
Jewelry
This is probably the smartest spangram you’ve ever seen because…it forms a gem shape on the board! Fun too!
Branches
Here are the rest of the answers that probably won’t surprise you
- Ruby
- Ruby
- Agate
- amethyst
- Ruby
- emerald
Branches
All the popular gemstones/jewelry are there but they are missing some major gemstones like diamonds. The first clue gave me RUBY and I went from there. AMETHYST was probably the hardest to remember to spell, but I eventually got there by going around the letter board.
Obviously the most creative part of this is the JEWELTONES icon. I got the JEWEL symbol as a hint early on, but I didn’t understand what they were going for until the end. Is this the first spangram code to completely wrap around itself? I think it might be so.
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