Strands hints, every day
One page a day, hints first and the answer covered until you ask.
How Strands works
A six by eight grid of letters hides a set of theme words. Every letter on the board is used exactly once. One special word, the spangram, describes the theme itself and touches two opposite sides of the grid.
Stuck? Any non-theme word of four or more letters earns progress towards an in-game hint. Our page gives you the ladder instead: theme first, then starting letters, then the spangram’s length and path.
Strands strategy that actually helps
Start from the theme sentence and guess what territory it points at, then scan the board's edges for long words running along them. Finding any theme word lights up letters that cannot belong to the spangram, so the board quietly partitions itself. Spend free hints early rather than late: a revealed word in the first minutes reshapes everything, while the spangram itself usually crosses the whole grid through the middle.
Common mistakes
Players lose most time forcing short words that happen to fit the letters. Every theme word is at least four letters and tiles the board with the rest, so a cute three-letter find is a decoy by definition. Another trap is reading the theme too literally; the daily titles love puns, and the second meaning is usually the real map.
Play it yourself first: Play the official Strands at The New York Times. Come back here the moment you want a nudge instead of a giveaway.
Recent answers
Full table in the Strands archive. Missed a day? Every daily page stays live at its own dated address.