Strands is the NYT’s new word game, in which your task is to find a selection of words hidden within a seemingly random jumble of letters. It’s currently in Beta and can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.
Each word is part of a wider theme, which you’re given a clue for at the start. You also have to uncover one ‘special’ word, called the ‘spangram’, which describes the puzzle’s theme in more general terms.
It’s played on a board of 48 letters, made up of six columns and eight rows. The aim is to fill the entire board by finding all of the theme words and the spangram.
Think of it as a word search, but taken to the next level: words don’t just read horizontally, vertically and diagonally, but instead can be made by drawing a winding path from letter to letter. You can go up or down, left or right, in any direction you want – so long as the letter you play touches the previous one you selected.
Each letter is only used once, and words never overlap.