Cheats and Clues for Your Strands Adventure – February 9, 2025
Searching for insight and solutions for Strands on February 9, 2025? This guide offers hints and strategies to help you decipher the day’s challenge under the theme “We are the champions!”
To make revisiting our Strands hints easier, bookmark this page. Previous hints are also available here if you want to catch up on earlier puzzles.
Below, you’ll find some indirect hints for today’s Strands puzzle. Further down, the spangram and the complete answers will be revealed. Feel free to scroll at your own pace and take only the clues you need!
Spangram Hint for Today’s Strands Puzzle
Look for the name of the major event happening today between the Eagles and Chiefs.
Theme Words Hint for Today’s Strands Puzzle
Focus on terms related to the game, including aspects of both playing and watching at home.
Warning: Spoilers Ahead for Today’s Strands Puzzle!
Now is the moment to divulge the answers for today’s Strands challenge.
What is Today’s Spangram?
The featured spangram for today is SUPERBOWL.
What Are the Theme Words for Today’s Strands?
The theme words include: PARTY, TACKLES, TROPHY, TOUCHDOWNS, and COMMERCIALS.
Here’s what the completed board looks like once everything is solved:
Decoding Today’s Strands
The initial connection leads to thoughts of Queen’s music, likely fitting given it’s Super Bowl Sunday, hinting at football.
Notice how SUPERBOWL stands out as the spangram, perfectly positioned in the center. 🟡
PARTY appears prominently in the top-left corner. 🔵
TROPHY is illustrated in the upper right section. 🔵
TACKLES concludes the upper area. 🔵
TOUCHDOWNS is found in the bottom left segment. 🔵
Finally, COMMERCIALS rounds out the word list. 🔵
Strands #343 “We are the champions!” 🟡🔵🔵🔵 🔵🔵
The Mechanics of Playing Strands
The Strands game is available on the New York Times website and within the NYT Games app.
Upon starting the game, you’ll be met with a board filled with letters and a clue that hints at the theme—typically presented as a phrase, like “Better with age.” Your task is to uncover words in the letter grid that align with the given theme.
A Fusion of Crossword and Word Search
The essential objective is identifying the “spangram,” a word that encapsulates the overall theme of the puzzle. For example, for the theme “Better with age,” the spangram is FERMENTED, which reflects items that improve over time. This spangram will span the full length of the game board either horizontally or vertically, hence the name. Finding the spangram simplifies the task of solving the rest of the puzzle significantly.
Within Strands, words can be arranged in any direction (upwards, downwards, sideways, or diagonally), with each letter only usable once. There exists a unique solution. When a word is correctly identified (like KOMBUCHA, MISO, or KIMCHI), it will be highlighted in blue.
For those who encounter difficulty, any four-letter (or longer) non-theme words can be submitted to gain hints. Submitting three such words will enable the “Hint” button. Clicking it will highlight letters in one of the theme words, although the letters must still be ordered correctly. If a hint already exists on the board and you utilize another before solving that specific word, the order of the letters for that word will be disclosed.
Achieving Victory in Strands
Unlike games such as Connections and Wordle, Strands cannot be lost. Submitting guesses results in either identifying a correct answer, accruing hint credits, or a visual cue indicating that the submitted word is too short or invalid. There’s no limit on the number of guesses, nor is there a countdown timer.
Victory is attained when all letters on the board are successfully utilized, indicating the spangram and all theme words have been identified. Upon completion, like other NYT games, a shareable card will display your performance, showcasing blue dots 🔵 for theme words located, a yellow dot 🟡 for the spangram detected, and a lightbulb 💡 for words that received hints.
