Hints, Spangram And Answers For Saturday, September 20th — Dire Straits

Today’s NYT Strands hints and answers

Credit: New York Times

It’s been a minute, my lovely Strandistarians, but I have returned to help you with today’s NYT Strands puzzle. We’ve reached the very end of summer and the weather has certainly turned. Rain and a distinctly autumnal chill have arrived, though the sun still beats down with relentless energy of a winded boxer. In any case, it’s the weekend. Let’s uncover some words!

Looking for Friday’s Strands? Check out our guide right here.

How To Play Strands

Strands is the newest game in the New York Times’ stable of puzzle games. It’s a fun twist on classic word search games. Every day we’re given a new theme and then tasked with uncovering all the words on the grid that fit that theme, including a spangram that spans two sides of the board. One of these words is the spangram which crosses from one side of the grid to another and reveals even more about the day’s theme.

Spoilers ahead.

Today’s Strands Hints

Read on for today’s theme and some hints to help you uncover today’s words.

Today’s Theme: Dire straits

Hint: When you’re in trouble of some kind.

Clue: Today’s spangram is three words combined.

Here are the first two letters of each word:

Remember, spoilers ahead!

What Are Today’s Strands Answers?

Today’s spangram is: INAFIX

Here’s the full list of words:

• PICKLE
• MUDDLE
• QUANDARY
• MESS
• PREDICAMENT
• DILEMMA

Here’s the completed Strands grid:

Today’s Strands Breakdown

This took me a minute just to even find the first word. You could say I was in a bit of a fix—or INAFIX as today’s spangram ended up being. I found PICKLE first, which didn’t help much, but then I stumbled upon MESS, which made QUANDARY quite obvious. This also led me to the spangram and from there I muddled through to MUDDLE. My DILEMMA wasn’t over yet, but once I’d found that word, the longest word of them all wasn’t much of a PREDICAMENT.

How did you do on your Strands today? Let me know on Twitter and Facebook.

Be sure to check out my blog for my daily Wordle guides as well as all my other writing about TV shows, streaming guides, movie reviews, video game coverage and much more. Thanks for stopping by!