NYT ‘Strands’ Hints, Spangram And Answers For Wednesday, February 19

Looking for Tuesday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:

ForbesNYT ‘Strands’ Hints, Spangram And Answers For Tuesday, February 18By Paul Tassi

Well, this is one of the hardest puzzles I have seen in a while because I had essentially no idea what it was talking about until the very last minute, and even then, I’m still confused about a couple of these. Good luck.

How To Play Strands

The New York Times’ Strands puzzle is a play on the classic word search. It’s in beta for now, which means it’ll only stick around if enough people play it every day.

There’s a new game of Strands to play every day. The game will present you with a six by eight grid of letters. The aim is to find a group of words that have something in common, and you’ll get a clue as to what that theme is. When you find a theme word, it will remain highlighted in blue.

You’ll also need to find a special word called a spangram. This tells you what the words have in common. The spangram links two opposite sides of the board. While the theme words will not be a proper name, the spangram can be a proper name. When you find the spangram, it will remain highlighted in yellow.

Be warned: You’ll need to be on your toes.

“Some themes are fill-in-the-blank phrases. They may also be steps in a process, items that all belong to the same category, synonyms or homophones,” The New York Times notes. “Just as she varies the difficulty of Wordle puzzles within a week, [Wordle and Strands editor Tracy]

Bennett plans to throw Strands solvers curveballs every once in a while.”

What Is Today’s Strands Hint?

The NYT hint is not terribly useful today until after you finish the puzzle, so I will help you more than they did.

Pick your own prefix

And mine is:

You eat them

That’s enough to get you started.

What Are Today’s Strands Answers?

The spangram is something I did not get until the end, and it is:

BERRIES

And here’s where that lies on the board:

And the answer list:

• RASP
• STRAW
• GOLDEN
• BLUE
• SALMON
• HUCKLE
• ELDER
• BLACK

Okay, look, I get it now, the prefix of different kinds of berries, but when you start with things like RASP, HUCKLE and GOLDEN you can understand how you would be confused. And I have literally no idea what a SALMON berry is, is that actually a real thing? I’m going to look it up, I don’t believe them.

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