Okay, so I’ve been seeing this “Strands” game popping up all over my socials, and I finally decided to give it a shot. Figured I’d document my, uh, process here, because why not? Maybe it’ll help someone, maybe it’ll just be a record of my descent into madness. We’ll see!
First thing I did was, obviously, open up the game. I found it on the NYT Games site, and get presented with this grid of letters. Looks kinda like a word search, but the instructions are pretty clear: find a theme that connects the words, then find the words that fit that theme.
I started by just staring at it. Seriously, for like a good five minutes. Just trying to see if any words jumped out at me. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. My brain was a blank canvas, much like the game grid felt at that moment.
Then I started trying to just brute-force it. I tried to find any word, any direction, any length. I found a couple of short, random words, but they didn’t seem to… connect. Like, what do “cat” and “the” have in common? Nothing, that’s what.
After that completely fruitless endeavor, I took a deep breath and looked for a strategy. Okay, new plan. I started looking for common letter combinations. You know, like “TH” or “ING” – stuff that shows up in a lot of words. I figured if I could find a few of those, maybe I could build out from there.
This actually started to work! I spotted a few “ING”s, and by tracing around them, I managed to find a couple of longer words. Progress! It felt like pulling teeth, but slow, agonizing progress.
I also, and this is important, paid attention to the hint they gave about the special * help me identify other related words.
It took me a while, okay? Longer than I’d like to * finally found all the word in that category.
So, yeah, that was my “Strands” experience. Not exactly a speed run, more of a slow, meandering walk through a confusing letter garden. But hey, I finished it! And that’s gotta count for something, right?
