Move over, Wordle and Connections, there’s a new linguistic sheriff in town. The New York Times has debuted Strands, its version of a word search game with a twist, and my personal favorite new distraction. I immediately go to this game first thing in the morning while I’m enjoying my cup ‘o’ Joe.
If you're a fellow word nerd, you'll absolutely love the literal twists and turns this clever game entails. Find out why Strands was recently my pick for the best app of the month and how you can play it for free... for now.
How to play Strands
The object of Strands is to find hidden words, which can zig and zag all throughout the letter field. Each word is connected to its fellows by a theme (much like in Connections), but NYT doesn’t just hand that theme over to you. You get a hint at the top that broadly alludes to it, which is sometimes helpful and sometimes beat-your-head-against-your-desk vague.
Once you start picking out words, the theme becomes apparent. For example, once I spied the words “dragon” and “centaur,” the clue of “That’s fantastic!” immediately made sense to me—I’m looking for fantasy-like creatures.
Image: Lauren Hannula
The theme itself is one of the words to find, and it spans the entire length or width of the field, thereby nicknamed the “Spangram.” It was only a few more moments before the theme of the game above popped out at me: “mythological.” I then filled in the rest of the grid pretty easily.
Image: Lauren Hannula
Some themes are… not so easy. That’s where the hint bank comes in. For each word you find that isn’t part of the day’s theme, you’ll bank one credit. Once you have three incorrect guesses, you’ll bank a hint. You can choose whether or not to use your banked hints; if you do, it will reveal one of the theme words.
Image: Lauren Hannula
Despite my best (stubborn) efforts, I’ve had to use hints more than once to finally crack the day’s code… and then felt utterly dumb for not having seen it myself. C’est la vie.
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Strands is free... for now
Strands is currently in beta, meaning anyone can access and play it without a NYT Games subscription. Though not technically a downloadable app—yet—you can save Strands to your device’s home screen and treat it like one. Here’s mine, for example, nestled comfortably in my Games folder on my iPhone like a real app:
Image: Lauren Hannula
If the game proves as addictive as its predecessors, it’s sure to be roped into NYT’s Games app (iPhone, Android), which costs $10/month (you can also upgrade to an All-Access subscription, which includes NYT’s digital newspaper, Wirecutter, NYT Cooking, and The Athletic). So play it for free-nintey-nine while you still can… and maybe you’ll learn a word or two along the way.
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