Strands: A Weaver's Perspective

Constructor tips from an amateur.

A couple days back, I showed off a few strands puzzles I’d built with help from a student website. Between the experience of making those, solving them every day, and putting other puzzles together, I’ve figured out a few tips to guide me if I make any more.

Spangrams should be 7-14 letters. Making the theme-defining, grid-spanning entry too long makes it a bit tough to place in the grid and starts crowding out the other entries. A spangram can technically be six letters (and a couple have been), but that seems to constrain its design too much, making it too easy to find.

Spangrams should be simple. A lot of them just describe the theme as directly as possible. When there is a little twist to them—I used HERO SANDWICH for my superhero-themed puzzle—the best approach is not to put a lot of thought into it. A little flash of cleverness is okay, but don’t leave anybody wondering what it meant.

Themes should be simple too. Developing your own puzzles means that you can write to your own niche interests a little bit—see my superhero idea—but like most kinds of writing, it’s real easy to overdo “writing for yourself.” When I did the hero idea, I made sure to stick to characters who’d had a lot of media exposure—FLASH was an entry that worked, but FIRE wasn’t. Although Fire is the name of a heroine who spent years in the Justice League, she’s not well-known outside of comics-loving circles.

Keep it real. An unwritten rule of strands designs is that they only include entries that are real words. And except for the spangram, all the entries are real single words—no phrases, no hyphenations. So FLASH might work, but other Justice League members like AQUAMAN and GREEN LANTERN wouldn’t, let alone SPIDER-MAN. (SUPERMAN and BATMAN are both dictionary words, but despite multiple definitions, they’re a little obscure as such.)

You’ve got 48. In theory, a strands grid could be larger or smaller (with the recommended size of the spangram changing to match the grid size). But the 6x8 size is very mobile-friendly, and both the official Strands game and its unofficial “custom” version treat it as a requirement. Given that, I like to decide the largest entries first. There are a lot more options when you’re down to under 16 letters and you can use four-letter, five-letter, or six-letter words to finish out.

No three-letter or two-letter words. Like the 6x8 grid, this doesn’t have to be a rule of Strands, but most people are glad it is. (Just like we could see two-letter words in mainstream crosswords, but most solvers are glad we don’t. Usually. The crossword world is developed enough that occasional exceptions exist, but a niche game like Strands isn’t really there yet.

With all that in mind, I’d encourage you to try your own hand at this. It’s probably more fun than some of what you’ll end up doing today! (I mean, statistically, that seems likely.)