Today’s Strands is one of those puzzles where the theme feels almost engineered into the board. The theme is “On the rise”, and even the starter clue nudges you toward the same idea: Time to climb. If you’re stuck, don’t just look for “climb” synonyms—think geography, elevation, and the shape words hidden in plain sight.
Hints
Theme: On the rise. The correct set of answers are all types of elevated landforms, and the spangram connects across the grid in a way that visually matches a hill.
To make progress fast, start by hunting for any obvious word fragments you can spell directly on the board. You only need to find three words of four letters or more to begin receiving theme reveal hints, so grabbing a couple of “workhorse” words can get you moving even if the final grouping isn’t clear yet.
Here are some in-game hint words you could search for while you explore the grid:
- MOCK
- MULL
- DIRE
- SLOP
- SLID
- POLE
- ROUND
- GROUND
- GREEK
The most important “aha” for today is how the spangram is shaped. The spangram is built to look like the slope of a hill rather than simply reading like a phrase. If you’re trying to locate it, you can work from one corner toward the middle, following a winding path that matches a rising landform.
For general puzzle-solving help with the NYT ecosystem, including how clue structures work across games like Connections, it can help to remember that Strands rewards both scanning (finding short word runs) and pattern recognition (noticing visual shapes and consistent letter paths).
Answers
Below are all the answers that fit today’s theme. The goal is to find them all, including the spangram, which uses every letter on the board by the time you’ve cleared the full set.
Nonspangram answers:
- HILL
- BUTTE
- MOUND
- HUMMOCK
- KNOLL
- SLOPE
- RIDGE
Today’s Strands spangram: HIGHERGROUND
How to find the spangram: start with the H that sits as the bottom letter on the far-left vertical row. Then wind up and over across the grid, following the path that forms a hill-like shape as you spell out HIGHERGROUND.
Strands fans often talk about “the shape test,” and today is a great example: once you notice the board is inviting a hill-shaped reading path, the rest of the elevation words tend to fall into place quickly. If you’re solving today’s Strands alongside other NYT word puzzles, it’s the same mindset—look for repeated patterns, then let the grid’s structure do some of the work.
And if you’re also playing Connections when you’re finished here, the contrast is fun: Strands gives you a visual geography theme; Connections asks you to group ideas by meaning. Both are different kinds of “rise”—one in letters, one in categories.
