NYT “Strands” Tips, Spangram and Answers for Wednesday, December 18th

Looking for clues, spangrams, and answers to Tuesday’s Strands? You can find them here:

ForbesNYT “Strands” Tips, Spangram and Answers for Tuesday, December 17thFrom Paul Tassi

We’ve had a tough week with Strands puzzles so far, and this one might not make things any easier for you if my solving time is anything to go by.

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 of 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?

Here’s the official note from the NYT and after that I’ll make my own.

You say you want a revolution

And my note is:

Spin to win

What are today’s Strands answers?

First comes the Spangram and then the full answer list.

SPINNER

And here you will find this on the board:

And the answer list is:

• WHEEL
• BALLERINA
• WIND TURBINE
• FOOTBALL
• EARTH
• DRYER

Lots of things that either spin, rotate, or rotate in some way, most of them in different ways, like a football spiral, are pretty much unlike anything on this list. I think the ones people might have the most trouble with are Pinwheel, I think, which now uses pinwheels, and Ballerina, which is more obvious but not what you’re looking for.

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