NYT Strands hints, answers for October 25, 2026

Today's New York Times Strands hints are simple for those familiar with the concept of creation. Strands, the Times' advanced word-search game, involves a unique twist on the classic word search. Players must form words from connected letters, moving in any direction including diagonally, and words can also change direction, resulting in unusual shapes and patterns.

Every letter in the grid is part of an answer, and there's always a theme linking all solutions, along with a spangram, a word or phrase that sums up the day's theme and spans the entire grid horizontally or vertically.

The game provides an opaque hint without giving away a word list, making it a more challenging experience than its other games like Wordle and Connections. If players find themselves stuck or don't have 10 or more minutes to solve today's puzzle, they can refer to the NYT Strands hints for today's puzzle to make progress at their own pace.

Today's theme for Strands is "Something to build on," and the words describe the components needed to build something. The spangram for today is expected to be horizontal.