Branches
Looking for Saturday Series hints, charts and answers? You can find them here:
Today may be a day of rest for some, but that doesn’t mean your brain has to take a Sunday off. Play some Strands games and see if you can solve today’s tricky puzzle. But first:
How to play coasts
The New York Times’ Strands puzzle is a take on the classic word search. It’s currently in beta, which means it won’t last unless enough people play it every day.
There’s a new Strands game you can 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’ll get an idea of what that topic 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 will tell you what the words have in common. The word spangram connects two opposite sides of the board. While the keywords would not be a special noun, the word spangram could be a special noun. When you find the word spangram, it will still be highlighted in yellow.
Be warned: you’ll need to be on your toes.
“Some topics are fill-in-the-blank phrases. They may also be steps in a process, items that all belong to the same category, or synonyms or homophones,” notes The New York Times. “Just as you change the difficulty level of a Wordle puzzle over the course of a week, [Wordle and Strands editor Tracy] Bennett plans to throw Strands an occasional curveball.
What are today’s thread tips?
We’ll start with today’s official tip from the New York Times and then I’ll give you one of my own for an extra boost if theirs is too vague.
Cut and color
And mine is:
Blinged out
I would say this is too oriental to grab onto right away.
What are the answers to today’s branches?
We’re moving into spoiler territory as the actual answers start here. We’ll start with the shortcode and then move on to the rest. The short code is:
Jewelry
This is probably the most clever spangram I’ve ever seen because…it forms a gem shape on the board! So much fun!
Branches
Here are the rest of the answers, which probably won’t surprise you.
- Ruby
- Sapphire
- Agate
- amethyst
- Ruby
- emerald
Branches
All the very common gems/gems are there but missing some of the most important ones like diamond. My first clue gave me a ruby and it was off to the races from there. Amethyst was probably the hardest to remember to spell, but I got there eventually by swiping around the message board.
Obviously the most creative part of this is the JEWELTONES icon. I got the JEWEL symbol as a hint early on, but I didn’t understand what they were going for until the end. Is this the first spangram code to completely wrap around itself? I think it might be so.
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