NYT “Strands” Clues, Spangram and Answers for Tuesday, August 13

Looking for tips, spangram and answers about Monday’s Strands? You can find them here:

ForbesNYT “Strands” Clues, Spangram and Answers for Monday, August 12From Paul Tassi

Tuesday’s Strands was the quickest one I finished, but if you’re here, it looks like you need a little help with that. Which is totally fine!

How to play Strands

The New York Times Strands puzzle is a twist on the classic word search puzzle. It’s currently in beta, meaning it will only remain available if enough people play it daily.

Every day there is a new Strands game. The game presents you with a 6×8 grid of letters. The goal is to find a group of words that have something in common and you will get a clue as to what the theme is. When you find a theme word it will stay highlighted in blue.

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

Be warned: you must be on your guard.

“Some topics are fill-in-the-blanks. They can also be steps in a process, items that all belong to the same category, synonyms or homophones,” notes the New York Times. “Just as she varies the difficulty of Wordle puzzles within a week, [Wordle and Strands editor Tracy] Bennett plans to throw curve balls to the Strands solvers every now and then.”

What is today’s Strands tip?

First the NYT tip, then my tip, which I think will give you a little more of a boost. Here is the official tip.

Look it up!

And my tip:

Mainly paper

Hopefully this helps you get started.

What are today’s Strands answers?

First the spangram, then the full list of answers below. Spoilers follow from here on. The spangram is:

REFERENCE

And this is what is written on the board:

The remaining answers are:

• DICTIONARY
• ATLAS
• ALMANAC
• THESAURUS
• MANUAL

Long words, so there are only five of them today. I finished this in less than a minute with no hints, which almost never happens. I’m surprised considering I don’t think I’ve used any of these in 20 years, relics from the era of printed books. Most of them you can look up online now. I’m not even 100% sure what an ALMANAC even is, but I know the word, so here we go.

I was looking for ENCYCLOPEDIA, but we only have so many squares on the board and that was probably too big. The others revealed themselves

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