Gaming NYT Strands Hints, Spangram, Answers: Tuesday, August 18 (Fool Me Once) By Paul Tassi ,
Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet. Follow Author Aug 17, 2026, 09:32pm EDT --:-- / --:-- This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more . This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more . Strands NYT Looking for Monday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
Given the subject of today’s Strands, the NYT could have done something, tricky, but they opted to play it straight.
The New York Times’ Strands puzzle is a play on the classic word search. It’s in beta for now, which means it’ll only stick around if enough people play it every day.
There’s a new game of Strands to play every day. The game will present you with a six by eight grid of letters. The aim is to find a group of words that have something in common, and you’ll get a clue as to what that theme is. When you find a theme word, it will remain highlighted in blue.
You’ll also need to find a special word called a spangram. This tells you what the words have in common. The spangram links two opposite sides of the board. While the theme words will not be a proper name, the spangram can be a proper name. When you find the spangram, it will remain highlighted in yellow.
Be warned: You’ll need to be on your toes.
“Some themes are fill-in-the-blank phrases. They may also be steps in a process, items that all belong to the same category, synonyms or homophones,” The New York Times notes. “Just as she varies the difficulty of Wordle puzzles within a week, [Wordle and Strands editor Tracy] Bennett plans to throw Strands solvers curveballs every once in a while.”
Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase
Time to do the NYT hint and then my own hint after that:
Here are the first two letters of all the words if you don’t want the entire thing just yet.
Now we begin the answer portion of the program which is the spangram and the full list of the other answers, the spangram is:
Strands NYT I spent a while looking for CHEAT in here, one of those times where a word is so obvious yet it is left out of the puzzle for presumably space or organization reasons. Or they just wanted to use cooler, harder words like BAMBOOZLE and HOODWINK. Ironically the one I had the most trouble with out of all of them was MISLEAD, as I just couldn’t get my head around those seven jumbled letters.
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