NEW ‘Strands’ hints, spangrams and answers for Tuesday January 7th

Looking for Tuesday’s Strands tip, spangram and answers? You can find them here:

ForbesNEW ‘Strands’ hints, spangrams and answers for Monday 6th JanuaryBy Paul Tassi

This is one of those puzzles where even if you understand the clue and theme it’s still really, really hard, so here we go.

How to play Strands

New York Times’ Beaches 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 is a new game Beaches to play every day. The game will present you with a grid of six by eight letters. The goal is to find a group of words that have something in common, and you get a clue as to what that theme is. When you find a theme word, it remains highlighted in blue.

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

Each letter is used once in one of the theme words and spangrams. You can connect letters vertically, horizontally and diagonally, and it is possible to change direction in the middle of a word. If you’re playing on a touchscreen, double-tap the last letter to submit your guess.

If you find three valid words of at least four letters that are not part of the theme, you will unlock the Hint button. Clicking here will highlight the letters that make up one of the theme words.

Be warned: you’ll need to be on your toes. Sometimes you will have to fill in the missing word or words in a sentence. On other days, the game may revolve around synonyms or homophones. The difficulty level will vary from day to day and the puzzle creators will sometimes try to surprise you.

What is today’s Strands tip?

The official NYT tip will be first, and I’ll throw in another to help further. The official tip is:

Front women

And my tip is:

Leading ______

What is today’s Strands answer?

There will be spoilers ahead, and that means the spanframe and answer list are below. The span frame is:

LADY

And found on the board here:

The answers are:

• FINGER
• SLIPPER
• JAM
• BIRD
• GAGA
• FREEDOM
• RABBIT

Okay, so most of these I understood when I found out that they were words that Lady precedes. I don’t know what Lady Bunny and Lady Slipper mean. So I looked them up. Lady Bunny is a famous drag queen. Lady Slipper is apparently a type of orchid. I mean, come on, how many people want to know? But I guess that’s why I’m here with answers and clues.

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