Today's NYT Strands Hints, Spangram, Answers: Friday, January 2 (Home Is Where The Hearth Is)

Today's NYT Strands Hints, Spangram, Answers: Friday, January 2 (Home Is Where The Hearth Is)
Source: Forbes

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights.

Looking for Thursday's Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:

Relatively easy puzzle today and it represents how you might want to be spending the last weekday you have off before everything goes back to normal on Monday.

How To Play Strands

The New York Times' Strands puzzle is a play on the classic word search. It's in beta for now, which means it'll only stick around if enough people play it every day.

There's a new game of Strands to play every day. The game will present you with a six by eight grid of letters. The aim is to find a group of words that have something in common, and you'll get a clue as to what that theme is. When you find a theme word, it will remain highlighted in blue.

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

Be warned: You'll need to be on your toes.

"Some themes are fill-in-the-blank phrases. They may also be steps in a process, items that all belong to the same category, synonyms or homophones," The New York Times notes. "Just as she varies the difficulty of Wordle puzzles within a week, [Wordle and Strands editor Tracy] Bennett plans to throw Strands solvers curveballs every once in a while."

What Is Today's Strands Hint?

Time to do the NYT hint and then my own hint after that:

Home is where the hearth is

And mine is:

Get Cozy

Today's NYT Strands Opening Letters

Here are the first two letters of all the words if you don't want the entire thing just yet.

  • BL
  • SN
  • RO
  • SL
  • FI
  • CO

What Are Today's Strands Answers?

Now we begin the answer portion of the program which is the spangram and the full list of the other answers, the spangram is:

COFFEE

Here it is on the page, and read on:

  • BLANKET
  • ROBE
  • FIREPLACE
  • SLIPPERS
  • COCOA
  • CUDDLES

Alright I am not exactly putting this in the top thousand of difficult puzzles here, as these are all pretty stereotypical aspects of cozy winter comfort and one logically flows into the other. Not to say I wouldn't love all these things (I have close to none of them), but it's not the hardest puzzle. I mean hearth and fireplace are pretty much the same thing, for one.

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