Gaming Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Spangram, Answers: Thursday, June 18 (Beneath The Waves) By Paul Tassi ,
Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet. Follow Author Jun 17, 2026, 10:00pm EDT --:-- / --:-- This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more . This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more . Strands NYT Looking for Wednesday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:
It’s an undersea adventure for Strands today, though with such a broad category, it’s a lot of words to hunt down.
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 While I know that the spangram here is Coral Reef, this is essentially anything that you might find in the ocean, so it’s a rather broad category. We’ve got everything from plants to crustaceans to fish and fish with very sharp teeth. No whales, however. Maybe they don’t want to get too close to coral reefs and end up smashing through them.
Follow me on Twitter , YouTube , and Instagram .
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy .