NYT ‘Strands’ Hints, Spangram And Answers For Saturday, June 21

Time for some weekend Strands, which I’ve heard is harder than the weekday ones, but I’m not sure I can actually prove that.

How To Play Strands

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.”

What Is Today’s Strands Hint?

Time to do the NYT hint and then my own hint after that:

Goose eggs

And mine is:

A great absence

What Are Today’s Strands Answers?

Now we begin the answer portion of the program which is the spangram and the full list of the other answers, the spangram is:

DIDDLYSQUAT

Here it is on the page, and read on:

The answers are:

• NAUGHT
• ZILCH
• ZIPPO
• BUPKIS
• NADA
• ZERO
• NOTHING

This one was an absolute speedrun for me, I think I did it in under a minute flat with a perfect score. The first thing I thought of with goose eggs was zero. And that of course was on the page itself, and I knew I was on the right track. The only thing that threw me off this time was “zippo” as I only knew that “zip” was one, and I did not realize that was supposed to be short for anything. Yet here we are.

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