App of the Month

The NYT has yet a new game out - in Beta form - to suck more time from me in a day.  

I'm an easy mark. Cleary. 

Strands is the name. 

It is about connecting adjoining letters - in most directions - to form words. Well, words that are four letters and higher. 

BUT - there is an unknown theme to each day and you gots to figger it out. 

On the plus side, you don't get dinged for guessing words that are not in the theme. Actually, do enough words that don't fit and you can have a 'hint'.  Until yesterday, I hadn't used the 'hint' button, but I was struggling. Finding LOTS of words, just not the right ones. And I also needed to try it out for this post. Win-Win? 

Here's the board. I haven't looked carefully day to day to see if it's always 6 across and 8 down, or if it was just for this puzzle. 

You can see I spelled 'LASER'.  While it wasn't in the theme, you can see my 'hint' button is starting to fill up. I'd go on to find probably almost a dozen words - none in the theme - before I tried the 'hint' button. 

Once I saw the hint, I had a pretty good idea of the theme. 

Once I got the 2nd word, I just had to remember what the seven deadly sins were. 

Oh yeah - you use every letter on the board. And there is a Spangram....which is the theme. 

Though they call them Cardinal Sins not Deadly. 

Since you don't get dinged - like in Connections or Wordle, it's as angst provoking to me. But it is Beta, so if it moves forward, who knows if the rules will stay in place. 

If you're looking for the game, you have to be on the NYT site (and have a subscription?). Go to the Games section and menu (three bars in the upper left corner) and scroll down the list of game to find it. 

Have "fun".