NYT ‘Strands’ Hints, Spangram And Answers For Monday, May 20

Looking for Sunday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:

ForbesNYT ‘Strands’ Hints, Spangram And Answers For Sunday, May 19By Paul Tassi

The work week has started, and that means time to skip doing work first thing in the morning and play Strands, Connections, Wordle or any of the other games the New York Times distracts you with. But first…

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.

Every letter is used once in one of the theme words and spangram. You can connect letters vertically, horizontally and diagonally, and it’s possible to switch directions in the middle of a word. If you’re playing on a touchscreen, double tap the last letter to submit your guess.

If you find three valid words of at least four letters that are not part of the theme, you’ll unlock the Hint button. Clicking this will highlight the letters that make up one of the theme words.

Be warned: You’ll need to be on your toes. Sometimes you’ll need to fill the missing word(s) in a phrase. On other days, the game may revolve around synonyms or homophones. The difficulty will vary from day to day, and the puzzle creators will try to surprise you sometimes.

What Is Today’s Strands Hint?

We will start with the official hint of the puzzle today which I found pretty interesting, and then I will make a separate hint of my own to take you a little further. The official hint is:

Fowl fairy tale

And my own hint will be:

Transformation

Maybe that one was a little too obvious but hey it’s a pretty tricky puzzle.

What Are Today’s Strands Answers?

Now we head to the actual answer part of the post here, so you’re going to want to scroll slowly. I’ll start with the spangram and then do the full list of answers. The spangram is:

UGLYDUCKLING

That’s a rare one where it’s actually backwards, going from right to left in the puzzle instead of left to right, that almost never happens. Here’s where it is:

Yeah didn’t expect that pattern did you. And here is the full list of answers:

• JOURNEY
• MISFIT
• SWAN
• BEAUTIFUL
• REFLECTION

So, in a rare situation, the Strands puzzle today tells the complete story of the Ugly Duckling, one that I did not really understand at first, but over time it became more clear. Though the spangram was the last thing I found, even once I understand what it was doing.

At first I just got JOURNEY and MISFIT and that was not really enough to get me to understand what was going on. Then once I got SWAN things started to click, and BEAUTIFUL and REFLECTION showed up soon after. Though I did use at least a few hints.

Anyway, I thought this was a rather clever puzzle for a change and it was fun to have one story contained on the board. More like this please.

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