How To Strands

Today's is a bit long, had to finish it fast.

Strands, if you don’t know, is the latest word game from the New York Times, added to its app this week. You start with a word-find-style grid of 48 letters, eight rows by six columns. Unlike a traditional word find, though, the answers are not found in a straight line: they wiggle around. Nor are you given a list of answers to find: all you get is a title that hints at the overall subject. (No word is accepted unless it’s longer than three letters.)

Sam Corbin just put out an NYT article with tips for playing. I’m going to summarize her tips first, then add some of my own. Spoilers for today’s puzzle.

Sam says, “Start thinking like a wordsmith.” The title often involves some wordplay or indirect thinking. Today’s title is “By the yard,” so right now I don’t know if “yard” refers to a unit of length/distance or the backyard of a house.

Sam says, “Try out a few different strategies.” I say, see what comes to you, and if nothing does, just start finding words. Sometimes the title suggests an idea to me immediately. When I saw the title “It’s right under your nose!”, I knew the theme would be some kind of anatomy—mouth, chin, lips? With a little more investigating, I found it was “mustache.”

Sam says, “Yes there are Easter eggs.” I say, yes…but they’re really rare, so don’t worry about them. In the example above, it’s a nice touch that the theme-defining entry, AKA the “spangram,” is in the shape of a mustache itself. But the crushing majority of theme entries don’t have an appropriate shape that they can be, especially since the rule of a spangram is that it’s the only entry to traverse the grid, either across it or up and down it.

I can’t think of what the theme is yet, so I’m just going to noodle through the grid and see what words I can find out of it.

Sam says, “Stick to the corners.” The wiggliness of the answers can make the right ones hard to guess at, but the geography of the corners constrains that wiggliness, making them a bit easier. Looking in the lower left corner makes it easy for me to find LENT:

Now, LENT is not one of the words that I’m meant to find, but I don’t have to worry about that. There’s no penalty for guessing a word that’s not meant to be in the grid, and in fact, there’s a slight reward: every time you find three words that aren’t in the answers but are in the Strands dictionary, you get entitled to a hint. Looking around the grid, I soon find two more: DISC in the upper right and GONNA near the middle.

(I’m glad to see the Strands dictionary is relaxed enough to accept GONNA.)

I say, don’t hint-shame yourself. Some Strands solvers make it a point of pride never to use hints. The design of Strands reinforces this idea: if you get through a game using no hints, it’ll say “Perfect!” With one hint, it’ll say “Great!” and with any more, it’ll say “Well Done!”

What sets Strands apart from most games with hints, however, is that hints are earned. You can only get them if you find three cromulent words that are four letters long or longer. I’ve played some games without taking hints—and I’ve played others where I made it a goal to earn and use as many hints as possible (I topped out at six).

So let’s see what happens when I use the hint I’ve earned:

Aha. Since NOGME and GEMON aren’t words, I think that’s a GNOME—and gnomes are a common decoration in front or back yards, so I may be on to the theme too. I draw a line connecting each letter to the next one behind it, and…

There we are. I could split hairs that this isn’t by the yard, but in the yard, but I don’t care too much, and probably neither do you.

I say, use the changing geography. Now that we’ve got GNOME, the lower-left corner is more isolated. That makes it easier to pick out the word PLANTER.

I say, don’t go nuts over the spangram. If you see a spangram right off, like I did with MUSTACHE? Sure! Fill that in. It’ll help—but finding any intended word gets you further on your way. As it is, what I filled in already has helped me find the spangram next: LAWN ORNAMENT.

(All entries in the puzzle are single dictionary words, except the spangram, sometimes.)

With that much space taken up, you can probably find WINDSOCK and FLAMINGO yourself. The last entry briefly confused me (THADBIRB? THABRIBD?) before resolving into BIRDBATH.

Side note: while it’s permitted to cross the paths between letters that you draw, Strands is designed so that’s not necessary.

Then the puzzle gives me results (“Great!”) that indicate where I used my hints and when I found the spangram.

I could share these with friends on social media and compare notes with them. A lot of people did similar sharing for Wordle, and the Times is smart to have learned a lesson from that. But honestly, I feel like my friends and I have more interesting things to talk about.

Next: home-brewed Strands.