Happy birthday to Strands! The New York Times Stands game, which is kind of like a word-find where you're not given the list of words to find, celebrated its 365th puzzle on Monday and marked its full one-year anniversary with a Strands-themed puzzle on Tuesday. (Spoilers ahead, so look away if you haven't solved today's puzzle yet.)
The puzzle proudly touts "It's our game-iversary" as the puzzle theme, but players might be surprised when they discover that the theme doesn't include words like "puzzle" or "words" or "celebrate" or "anniversary." Instead, the answers, meaning the words a player has to find, are all synonyms for the word Strands.
Read more: Rules explained, plus tips for the daily NYT Strands puzzle
Players will need to find the words CURL, WISP, STRING, RIBBON, THREAD, TENDRIL and FILAMENT, plus the spangram--a word that spans from one side of the puzzle to the other--which is simply STRANDS. And of course, all those words, from curl to filament, are another way to define the game title, Strands. (I admit I did not make the connection at first and figured it was just a hair-styling theme. D'oh!)
Read more: Here are the answers for today's "game-iversary" Strands puzzle
My best tips for solving Strands
I've been playing Strands almost since it launched, and I've developed some solid strategies. Here are my three favorites.
Clue in
To get more clue words, see if you can tweak the words you've already found, by adding an "S" or other variants. And if you find a word like WILL, see if other letters are close enough to help you make SILL, or BILL.
Hunt for related theme words
Once you get one theme word, look at the puzzle to see if you can spot other related words.
Here's how to spell out the theme word
If you've been given the letters for a theme word, but can't figure it out, guess three more clue words, and the puzzle will light up each letter in order, revealing the word.
Toughest recent Strands puzzles
Here are some of the Strands topics I've found to be the toughest in recent weeks.
#1: Dated slang, Jan. 21. Maybe you didn't even use this lingo when it was cool. Toughest word: PHAT.
#2: Thar she blows! Jan.15. I guess marine biologists might ace this one. Toughest word: BALEEN or RIGHT.
#3: Off the hook, Jan. 9. Similar to the Jan. 15 puzzle in that it helps to know a lot about sea creatures. Sorry, Charlie. Toughest word: BIGEYE or SKIPJACK