Tips, Spangram and answers from the NYT “Strands” for Monday, May 20

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

ForbesTips, Spangram and answers from the NYT “Strands” for Sunday, May 19By Paul Tassi

The work week has started, which means it’s time to skip work first thing in the morning and play Strands, Connections, Wordle, or one 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 classic word search word game. It’s in beta at the moment, which means it will only last if enough people play it every day.

There is a new game Strands play every day. The game will present you with a six-by-eight grid of letters. The goal is to find a group of words that have something in common and you will get an idea of ​​what that theme is. When you find a topic word, it will remain highlighted in blue.

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

Each 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 change direction in the middle of a word. If you’re playing on a touchscreen, double-tap the last letter to submit your proposal.

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

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

What is today’s Strands index?

We’ll start today with the official puzzle clue which I found quite interesting, then I’ll do my own clue to take you a little further. The official index is as follows:

Poultry fairy tale

And my own clue will be:

Transformation

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

What are the answers to today’s questions?

We’re now heading to the reply portion of the post here, so you’re going to want to scroll slowly. I’ll start with the spangram, then list the full answers. The spangram is:

UGLY DUCKLING

This is a rare case of going backwards, going right to left in the puzzle instead of left to right, which almost never happens. Here’s where it is:

Yeah, I didn’t expect this model, did I. And here is the full list of answers:

• JOURNEY
• INADEQUATE
• SWAN
• BEAUTIFUL
• REFLECTION

So, in a rare situation, the Strands puzzle now tells the complete story of the ugly duckling, a story that I didn’t really understand at first, but over time it became clearer. Although spangram was the last thing I found, even once I figured out what it did.

At first I only had JOURNEY and MISFIT and that wasn’t really enough to make me understand what was going on. Then, once I got SWAN, things started to click, and BEAUTIFUL and REFLECTION appeared shortly after. Although I used at least some clues.

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

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