Today’s NYT Strands answers, clues, and hints on February 21 (#720)

Strands is one of the newer daily word puzzles from the New York Times and follows the success of other popular word games like Wordle and Connections. It’s often more of a brain teaser than those two, and generally takes longer, so looking for clues comes in handy if you’re hoping to solve today’s Strands without wasting too much time.

The goal is find a selection of hidden words all relating to a wider common theme within a grid of 48 (6×8) letters. Unlike a traditional wordsearch puzzle, you can string together adjacent letters in any direction, and the goal is to complete the entire board. In addition to the theme words, there’s also the “spangram,” a word that describes today’s theme and touches two opposite sides of the grid – it can also be multiple words. You’ll know it’s the spangram as it will highlight it in yellow once found.

What is today’s NYT Strands theme? (February 21, puzzle #720)

The theme for today’s Strands is “The beer necessities”. NYT rates the difficulty of today’s puzzle (#720) as “easy”.

Non-theme hint words for today

Strands has another interesting mechanic. If you make a word that isn’t part of the theme words, you work towards earning a hint. Three non-theme words will earn you a hint, which will reveal the letters of a theme word. Here are today’s hint words:

• WARM
• THEY
• SURE
• WART
• SHARE
• SWAY

How many letters are in today’s spangram? And is it one word?

There are 8 letters in the spangram today, and it can actually be written as one word, two words, or hyphenated.

Which sides of the board does today’s spangram touch?

The spangram today touches the third column, first row, and the fourth column, last row. This means the spangram starts with H and ends with W.

What are all the answers in today’s Strands?

If you’ve taken advantage of all the hints and still don’t have all the answers, below you can find the full answers for today’s Spangram. There are eight regular theme words in total, followed by the spangram in bold to make a total of nine.

• HOPS
• BARLEY
• WATER
• MALT
• FLAVOR
• YEAST
• SUGAR
• WHEAT
• HOMEBREW

Is Strands more difficult than Wordle?

Strands and Wordle are similar in the sense that they’re both word games, but there’s much more to solve in Strands, so we’d say it leans towards being the more difficult of the two. If wordsearches are more your thing, then you might find Strands to be more enjoyable than Wordle, though that doesn’t guarantee it’s easier. You need to find words that cover the entire board, which means solving around seven or eight words in the correct pattern, including the spangram – Wordle is just one word every day.

The built-in hints system is one nice thing about Strands and something that Wordle doesn’t offer you. If you can’t immediately find any words related to the theme and don’t know where to start, you can simply string together any word and have a decent chance of building towards a hint.