If you’re looking for help with Tuesday’s Strands puzzle, you’re in the right place. This one closes out 2025, and surprisingly, it skips any New Year’s theme. No confetti. No resolutions. Just a solid, brain-twisting word search to end the year.
How to Play Strands
Strands is The New York Times’ take on a classic word search, with a twist.
Each day, players get a 6×8 grid of letters. Your goal is to find several words that all share a common theme. Once you find a correct theme word, it locks in and turns blue.
There’s also one special word to uncover: the spangram.
The spangram explains how all the theme words connect. It stretches across the board from one side to the opposite side and highlights in yellow once found. Unlike theme words, the spangram can be a proper name.
The game is still in beta, which means its future depends on daily player engagement. Translation: the more you play, the more likely it sticks around.
What Makes Strands Tricky
Not every theme is straightforward. According to The New York Times, themes can include categories, processes, synonyms, homophones, or even fill-in-the-blank phrases.
Difficulty varies intentionally. Just like Wordle, Strands throws in occasional curveballs, a design choice guided by editor Tracy Bennett.
In short, stay sharp. The grid is friendly. The logic is not always.
Today’s Official Strands Hint
NYT hint:
One good turn deserves another
Helpful, but vague enough to make you squint at the board a little longer than planned.
Extra Hint (If You’re Stuck)
Think about what the Earth does.
That usually flips the switch.
Today’s Opening Letters
If you want a nudge without spoiling everything, here are the first two letters of each answer:
- OR
- RA
- PI
- SP
- WH
- CI
Today’s Spangram
The spangram for today’s puzzle is:
ROUNDANDROUND
It connects the entire theme and stretches cleanly across the grid.
Full List of Answers
Here are all the theme words for Tuesday’s Strands:
- ORBIT
- ROTATE
- CIRCLE
- PIROUETTE
- WHIRL
- SPIN
Final Thoughts
Confession time. One early hint pointed clearly to SPIN, yet NIPS somehow made it onto the board first. Not my finest moment, but mistakes count as clues too.
Once the theme clicked, the rest fell into place quickly. A full-board circular spangram might have been fun, but space matters, and logic won this round.
All in all, it’s a clean, clever way to wrap up the final Strands puzzle of 2025. No fireworks needed.
