NYT “Strands” Tips, Spangram and Answers for Monday, December 16th

ForbesNYT “Strands” Tips, Spangram and Answers for Sunday, December 15thFrom Paul Tassi

An extremely difficult puzzle today, no exaggeration. One of the hardest I’ve ever done as it uses almost no real words. You’ll see.

How to play Strands

The New York Times’ strands Puzzle is a classic word search game. It’s currently in beta, meaning it won’t last unless enough people play it every day.

There’s a new game strands to play every day. The game presents you with a letter grid of six by eight letters. The goal is to find a group of words that have something in common and give you a clue as to what the topic is. When you find a topic word, it remains highlighted in blue.

You also need to find a special word called Spangram. This will tell you what the words have in common. The spangram connects two opposite sides of the board. While the topic words are not a proper noun, the spangram can be a proper noun. When you find the Spangram, it will remain highlighted in yellow.

Each letter is used once in one of the topic words and in the Spangram. You can connect letters vertically, horizontally and diagonally and change direction in the middle of a word. If you’re playing on a touchscreen, double-tap the last letter to place your guess.

Finding three valid off-topic words with at least four letters will unlock the Hint button. Clicking on it will highlight the letters that make up one of the topic words.

Be warned: you must be on your guard. Sometimes you need to fill in the missing words in a phrase. Other days the game might revolve around synonyms or homophones. The difficulty varies from day to day and the puzzle creators will sometimes try to surprise you.

What is today’s Strands clue?

I’ll do the official note first and then move on to one I made myself that I think you’ll need this time.

Crossed words

And my note is:

Combinations

What are today’s Strands answers?

The Spangram will appear first and then I will create the full list of answers underneath.

PORTMANTEAUX

And here you will find this on the board:

The answers can be found here, and if you want to know, I’ll just write down the combination words:

• ATHLEISURE – athletics and leisure
• ZORSES – Zebras and horses
• ANKLET – ankle and bracelet
• BRUNCH – breakfast and lunch
• SPORK – spoon and fork
• SMOG – smoke and fog

Easily one of the hardest puzzles I’ve ever done, no exaggeration here as most of them aren’t even real words that you could even attempt to decipher. I had no idea a zorse, a literal cross between a zebra and a horse, existed. Athleisure was almost impossible to figure out. Just a wild mystery today.

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