Strands Puzzle Guide: Clues and Answers for March 15, 2025
Seeking clues and solutions for the Strands game on Saturday, March 15, 2025? This post provides essential hints and tips along with the final answers, themed around “Free for all.”
To easily revisit these hints daily, consider bookmarking this page. Past clues are also accessible here if you’re curious about previous puzzles.
Here, you’ll find some subtle pointers regarding today’s Strands answers, followed by the full spangram and solutions further down the page. Take your time and grab just the hints you need!
Spangram Hint for Today’s Strands Puzzle
Think of two words that describe a collection of items you might receive at a convention or a new job.
Hints for Theme Words in This Strands Puzzle
These items are examples of commonly distributed corporate gifts, usually low-cost and handed out in large quantities.
WARNING: Spoilers Ahead for Today’s Strands Puzzle!
The answers for today’s Strands will be disclosed shortly.
Today’s Spangram
The spangram for today is SWAGBAG.
Today’s Theme Words
The theme words include: TOTE, DECAL, PENCIL, SHIRT, NOTEBOOK, LANYARD, BOTTLE.
Take a look at the completed board once all the solutions are in place:
Solving Today’s Strands
While “Free for all” typically signifies a disorderly free-for-all, it seems to hint at complimentary items in this context.
Located in the upper right corner is SHIRT. 
The connection could be that T-SHIRTS are often complimentary gifts at events!
Up in the top left corner is TOILET—I initially thought of TOILETRIES, but didn’t hit the mark.
BOTTLE appears in the bottom right corner. Another common freebie found in gift bags!
Next to BOTTLE is LANYARD.
NOTEBOOK is positioned in the lower left corner.
Realization strikes: the spangram is SWAGBAG! 
Strands #377 “Free for all”
Playing Strands
Access the Strands game on the New York Times website or via the NYT Games app.
Upon entering the game, you will encounter a board filled with random letters and a clue hinting at the theme—this will be a phrase such as “Better with age.” Your task is to identify hidden words on the board that align with the theme.
A Vocabulary Challenge Combining Crossword and Word Search
The spangram holds paramount significance as it directly relates to the puzzle’s theme (for instance, “Better with age” has a spangram of FERMENTED). This word stretches across the entire board, either horizontally or vertically, resulting in its name. Locating the spangram simplifies solving the rest of the puzzle.
In Strands, words can be arranged in any manner (up, down, left, right, or diagonally), and each letter is utilized solely once. There is only one true solution. Upon correctly identifying a word, like KOMBUCHA or KIMCHI, the word will be highlighted in blue.
If challenges arise, submit non-theme words of four letters or more to earn a hint. After providing three such words, you can click the “Hint” button, which will highlight the letters in a theme word. You will still need to connect these letters correctly to form the word. If additional hints are applied after one is already available for a word, its letter order will be disclosed.
Winning Strands
In contrast to Connections and Wordle, Strands does not allow players to lose. Your guesses result in either identifying a word, earning hint credit, or receiving feedback that your submission is invalid (indicated by a shaking text). No guess limit applies, nor is there a timer.
Victory is achieved when all letters on the board are correctly utilized, which means identifying the spangram and all theme words. Similar to other NYT games, once you solve the puzzle, a shareable card will show your performance indicators: blue dots signify theme words discovered, the yellow dot indicates the spangram’s identification, and a lightbulb 
represents words hinted at.
