If you’re looking for Strands hints and answers for Friday, July 26, 2024, read on—I’ll share some clues and tips, and finally the solution to the Go for the Gold puzzle.
For an easy way to get back to our Strands suggestions every day, Bookmark this page. You can also find our past hints there, in case you want to know what you missed in a previous puzzle.
Below, I’ll give you some oblique hints at today’s Strands answers. And further down the page, I’ll reveal the spangram and the answers. Move slowly and only get the hints you need!
Clue for the spangram in today’s Strands puzzle
A world famous sporting event starts today in Paris.
Hint for the theme words in today’s Strands puzzle
These are all the sporting events you can see at this year’s games.
WARNING: Spoilers ahead for today’s Strands puzzle!
We are ready to provide the answers to today’s Strands puzzle.
What is spangram in the Strands today?
Today’s spangram is OLYMPICS.
What are the buzzwords in Strands today?
Today’s theme words are: HORSES, LANGUAGE, COUNTRY, SWIMMING, GOLF, KARATE.
Here’s what the board looks like when the puzzle is solved:
How I solved today’s Starters
I have a hunch we’re looking at an Olympics-themed category today, perhaps with sports featured in the summer games.
I make out the letters YMP in one row and think it’s part of the word OLYMPICS, and it is. Here, the spangram. ?
This helps me spot the word NOT below that. ?
TRACK is to the right of that. ?
KARATE sits along the bottom right. ?
And GOLF completes the bottom half. ?
I see a QU and I can only think of one sport with those letters: EQUITY. ?
Lastly, ALBANIA. ?
How to play Strands
You can find the Strands game on the New York Times website and in the NYT Games app.
When you start playing, you’ll see a game board with a variety of letters, surrounded by a clue that gives a hint about the board’s theme – this will be a phrase, like “Better with age.” Your task is to find the words hidden inside the board that reflect the theme of the puzzle.
A crossword puzzle with a word search
The most important word to find is “spangram”, a word that most clearly expresses the theme of the puzzle. (For example, the spangram for the “Better with Age” puzzle is FERMENTED, which depicts products that, you guessed it, get better with age.) The spangram will span the entire game board, either from left to right or top to bottom (hence the name). When you find the spangram, it will be highlighted in yellow. Solving the spangram usually makes the rest of the puzzle much easier to complete.
In Strands, words can travel in any direction (up, down, left, right, and diagonal), and you’ll only use each letter once. There is only one correct solution. When you correctly identify one of the puzzle words (for example, KOMBUCHA, MISO or KIMCHI), it will be highlighted in blue.
If you’re struggling to solve the puzzle, you can submit any non-theme word you see (as long as it’s four letters or more) to get credit for a single hint. If you send three words without a subject, the “Hint” button will be clickable; if you click it, all the letters in one of the subject words will be highlighted for you. You will need to connect these highlighted letters in the correct order to form one of the topic words. If there is already a hint in the table and you use another hint before choosing that word, the letter order of that word will be revealed.
How to earn Strands
Unlike Connections and Wordle, you can’t fail Strands. When you submit guesses, you’ll either correctly identify an answer, get credit for a hint, or the text will wave back and forth, indicating that the word you submitted is too short or invalid. You can’t run out of guesses and there’s no time limit.
You win when you have used all the letters on the board correctly, which means you have identified the spangram and all the theme words. Like other NYT games, after solving the puzzle, you’ll see a shared card showing how you performed that day: blue dot ? show the topic words you found, the yellow dot ? tell me when you found the spangram and a lamp ? shows the words you got a hint for.