Looking for tips, spangram and answers about Monday’s Strands? You can find them Here.

ForbesToday’s NYT Strands tips, spangram and answers for Monday, September 23From Paul Tassi

Today there is a new Strands puzzle. This is a topic that is very close to my heart, so I am very excited to share it with you.

How to play Strands

The New York Times Strands puzzle is a twist on the classic word search puzzle. It’s currently in beta, meaning it will only remain available if enough people play it daily.

Every day there is a new Strands game. The game presents you with a 6×8 grid of letters. The goal is to find a group of words that have something in common and you will get a clue as to what the theme is. When you find a theme word, it will remain highlighted in blue.

You also need to find a special word called a spangram. This tells you what the words have in common. The spangram connects two opposite sides of the board. While the theme words are not a proper noun, the spangram can be a proper noun. Once you find the spangram, it will remain highlighted in yellow.

Be warned: you must be on your guard.

“Some topics are fill-in-the-blanks. They can also be steps in a process, items that all belong to the same category, synonyms or homophones,” notes the New York Times. “Just as she varies the difficulty of Wordle puzzles throughout the week, (Wordle and Strands editor Tracy) Bennett plans to give Strands solvers a challenge every now and then.”

What is today’s Strands tip?

We’ll start with the official tip and then move on to a tip I created myself to make an even bigger impact. The official tip is:

Keep your distance

And mine is:

Literary genre

What are today’s Strands answers?

First comes the spangram, followed by the full list of answers. The spangram is:

SCIENCE FICTION

And this is what is written on the board:

Certainly one of the longer spangrams we’ve had. The list of answers is below:

• MARTIANS
• FOREIGNER
• ROBOT
• CYBORG
• MUTANT
• DROID

So we essentially have three words for machines: DROID, ROBOT and CYBORG. When I saw DROID, I thought this might end up being specific to Star Wars, since that was when the term became popular, but that wasn’t the case.

Then we have two aliens, ALIEN and MARTIAN. Meanwhile, MUTANT takes us more into X-Men territory, although it’s hardly the only work of fiction to use that term. I love science fiction, but I was at the bottom when MUTANT and CYBORG got tangled up.

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