07 March 2024

A new word puzzle at The New York Times

"Strands, the new word-search game still in beta, seems to fuse some of the best features of Wordle, Connections, and the crosswords... Connections may torment its players with little room for error, but Strands rewards wrong guesses, in a way, by filling in a progress bar that gets you to a hint. The game displays its daily theme front and center, crossword-style, which helps you with the first, and toughest, word to find. From there, each further discovery shrinks the board and makes the next one that much easier, delivering a pleasant sense of acceleration toward victory."
The embedded graphic shows my attempts in order (used a hint, found four theme words, then the unifying "spangram" phrase, then the last three theme words).  As discussed at the link, Strands is essentially an advanced form of word search, which for me is a rather unsatisfying time-wasting game.  I will probably try it a few more times and then drop it, as I did with Wordle and Connections.  If you want to give it a try, the game is currently available online here.

14 comments:

  1. Try Worldle instead! Guess the country by its shape.

    https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/

    Then neighbors, capital, languages, flag, biggest cities, size and population.

    Even if you cheat by using a map, it's an interesting game. Most will find their geography of some part of the world is way worse than they think. Or can you name the neighbors of Rwanda of the top of your head?

    If this is too hard, there's also Statele, with US states. This is a lot easier.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I did that for a while last year -

      https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2023/01/geography-game.html

      Delete
  2. Strands #4
    “Don’t do it!”
    💡🔵💡🔵
    🔵🔵🔵🔵
    🟡🔵

    ReplyDelete
  3. Strands #5
    “Do the do”
    💡🔵🔵🔵
    🟡🔵🔵🔵

    ReplyDelete
  4. Strands #6
    “FRAGILE: handle with care”
    💡🔵🔵🔵
    🔵🔵🟡🔵
    🔵
    I'll stop posting my results, but others are welcome to do so - especially if you achieve a perfect score (all the words using no hints)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Strands #6
    “FRAGILE: handle with care”
    🔵🔵🔵💡
    🔵🔵🔵🟡
    🔵

    ReplyDelete
  6. Once you get two or three words, the rest are easy. The letters all chain up, so it is a matter of looking at what is left and seeing if you can make a word from the letters that are close together.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Strands #6
    “FRAGILE: handle with care”
    🔵🔵🔵🟡
    🔵🔵🔵🔵

    ReplyDelete
  8. I took two hints on #6, but today was much easier:

    Strands #7
    “Sounds good to me”
    🔵🔵🟡🔵
    🔵🔵🔵

    ReplyDelete
  9. Strands #8
    “To put it mildly”
    🔵🔵🔵🔵
    🔵🔵🟡🔵

    This one was very very easy.

    ReplyDelete
  10. As soon as one understands that in order to pack the words into the space they are coiled up like protein molecules rather than stretched out as in typical Word Search puzzles, it becomes easier to find them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. eWlplut (a protein coil of 'well put').

      Delete
  11. Strands #15
    “World piece”
    🔵🔵🔵🔵
    🔵🔵🟡🔵

    Literally a few minutes on this one.

    ReplyDelete
  12. It seems like the more often you play, the easier i t gets? Maybe you get better with guessing what their weird crossword like clue for the puzzle is?

    ReplyDelete

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