NYT “Strands” Tips, Spangram and Answers for Sunday, November 3rd

Looking for Saturday Strands clues, spangrams and answers? You can find them here:

ForbesNYT “Strands” Tips, Spangram and Answers for Saturday, November 2ndFrom Paul Tassi

This is probably the hardest Strands I've done since I started playing, even though the game isn't that old at this point.

How to play Strands

The New York Times Strands puzzle is a nod to the classic word search. It's currently in beta, meaning it won't last unless enough people play it every day.

Every day there is a new game of Strands to play. The game presents you with a letter grid of six by eight letters. The goal is to find a group of words that have something in common and give you a clue as to what the topic is. When you find a topic word, it remains highlighted in blue.

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

Be warned: you must be on your guard.

“Some topics are fill-in-the-blank texts. They can also be steps in a process, elements 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 curveballs to the Strands solvers from time to time.”

What is today's Strands clue?

Scroll slowly. The official clue for the puzzle is below and I'll make up a second one to help you afterwards. The official theme clue for today's beach puzzle is…

In my kingdom

And my own note? I guess I may be being overly helpful here, but…

Charles Darwin

What are today's Strands answers?

Spoilers follow. Here are the answers, from Spangram to the full list of puzzle worlds. This may also be a word that you need to look up individually if you don't know exactly what it is.

TAXONOMY

This fits into the grid from one side to the other:

The full answer list is:

• CLASS
• GENUS
• SPECIES
• DOMAIN
• COMMAND
• TRIBE
• FAMILY

This whole puzzle depends on whether you know the Linnean system of biological classification, which uses all of these terms to group different types of organisms together, and how they relate to each other or are classified together. TAXONOMY, the Spangram, is the science of classification. Most of these are “normal” words, but you can stumble across really difficult words like PHYLUM. Or perhaps GENUS didn't occur to me. It's a difficult question and really depends on expertise.

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