NYT Strands today — hints, answers and spangram for Friday, May 17 (game #75)

May 16, 2024

It’s Friday, the sun is shining (where I am at least) and it’s a fine day to play Strands, the NYT’s new-ish word game. If you haven’t played before and have landed here curious to see what it’s about, check out my What is NYT Strands? hub. If you already know all about it, read on for my hints and to see how I did today.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to know the answers.

Your Strands expert

Marc McLaren

NYT Strands today (game #75) – hint #1 – today’s theme

What is the theme of today’s NYT Strands?

• Today’s NYT Strands theme is… Looking for a mate

NYT Strands today (game #75) – hint #2 – clue words

What are some good clue words today?

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

• PRIME

• LIME

• PREEN

• GOING

• CHOPS

• BETTER

NYT Strands today (game #75) – hint #3 – spangram

What is a hint for today’s spangram?

• Singular vision

NYT Strands today (game #75) – hint #4 – spangram position

What are two sides of the board that today’s spangram touches?

• First: left, 4th row

• Second: right, 3rd row

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Strands today (game #75) – the answers

NYT Strands answers for game #75 on a blue background — (Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today’s Strands, game #75, are…

CHOPSTICK
MITTEN
PLIER
BOOKEND
TONG
WING
EARPLUG
SPANGRAM: PAIRED

My rating: Moderate
My score: Perfect

It took me a while to make a breakthrough here, but once I had the concept it wasn’t too bad. The theme clue of ‘Looking for a mate’ is nicely cryptic; it makes sense once you know that the spangram is PAIRED or identify an answer or two, but could be several other things until then. For instance, I thought it was a chess reference at first, so was delighted when I spotted ‘rook’, but that was either a coincidence or a deliberate red herring.

It was only when I randomly uncovered CHOPSTICK that I realized what was going on. Even then, it was quite hard to find other answers, because ‘things that go in pairs’ is not as obvious as some other recent Strands puzzles. However, finding the spangram made the task a bit simpler by virtue of reducing the number of permutations for many of the letters, and I eventually managed to find the other solutions.

How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.

Yesterday’s NYT Strands answers (Thursday 16 May, game #74)

BITTER
SALTY
SWEET
SOUR
UMAMI
PIQUANT
SPICY
TART
SPANGRAM: FLAVORS

What is NYT Strands?

Strands is the NYT’s new word game, following Wordle and Connections. It’s currently in Beta and can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

I’ve got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you’re struggling to beat it each day.

Source

It’s Friday, the sun is shining (where I am at least) and it’s a fine day to play Strands, the NYT’s new-ish word game. If you haven’t played before and have landed here curious to see what it’s about, check out my What is NYT Strands? hub. If you already…