NYT ‘Strands’ Hints, Spangram And Answers For Thursday, February 20

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

ForbesNYT ‘Strands’ Hints, Spangram And Answers For Wednesday, February 19By Paul Tassi

Okay I am going to classify this in the “tough puzzle” category, at least more so than usual, as it took every hint I could find to extract the answers from this one, and I think it may be the same for you. So here is some help.

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 really tripped me up and was not helpful today, so hopefully mine will be better.

Together for the Present

And mine is:

Don’t forget the gift

That’s enough to get you started.

What Are Today’s Strands Answers?

The spangram is very helpful today, provided you can actually find it. At least a lot of the letters are in a line.

ANNIVERSARY

And here’s where that lies on the board:

And the answer list:

• FIRST
• PAPER
• FIFTIETH
• GOLD
• SIXTIETH
• DIAMOND

So, what the deal is here is they have three milestones for anniversaries, first, fiftieth and sixtieth, and these match up with different types of gifts or just classifications that match those anniversaries which match up with some tradition that I certainly do not know the origin of. This took forever to figure out and some outside research as well.

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