Strands, the New York Times still-in-beta word search game, is now on its 10th puzzle.
Thats begun, and hoo boy, people are mad.
Then come back and well discuss what you just experienced.
This puzzle is new, so its okay if you havent figured everything out yet!
Remember, in Strands, todays theme is the clue you get when you initiate the page.
I think of it as being the title of the puzzle.
The spangram, in turn, describes what the blue words have in common.
(Blue words: COMMA, APOSTROPHE…)
Shell have a ball went with the spangram CINDERELLA.
(Blue words: PUMPKIN, SLIPPER…)
I gotta dip!
went with the spangram GUACAMOLE.
(Blue words: AVOCADO, JALAPENO…)
Simple, right?
Thats because theyre starting us off easy.
There have been some trickier ones:
To put it mildly was EUPHEMISMS.
Rulers decree was MEASUREMENTS.
For example, here are somecrosswordclues that Ive chuckled at in the past week:
Product lines?
for BARCODE
Dating inits for BCE (Get it?
Those letterscould be part of a prehistoric date)
B?
A grand is one thousand, and a finale is an ending.
The puzzle asks us to find endings for the phrase GRAND ____.
Weve seen all kinds of tricky combinations there, including homophones and anagrams.
So what kind of wordplay can we expect in Strands?
(Fortunately, anagrams wont really work.)
Recall that the NYT hinted we might see fill-in-the-blanks someday.
Thats happened twice already.
Get it?Get it??
?Im sorry, I was tickled by this once I figured it out.
It also took me a good long while to get it, because this is a tough puzzle!
It takes a few leaps of logic to get those aha!
Bottom line: This isnotan easy puzzle.
If you know and love the wordplay tricks of both Crosswords and Connections, youll be into Strands.
Just dont expect it to be easy.
