NEW ‘Strands’ hints, spangrams and answers for Tuesday, December 17th

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

ForbesNEW ‘Strands’ hints, spangrams and answers for Monday 16th DecemberBy Paul Tassi

After yesterday’s all-time difficult Strands puzzle with made-up words, I can promise you this one will be a little easier.

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?

Official tip comes first and then I’ll come up with one to help things along.

It’s on!

And my tip is:

Reading the rainbow

What is today’s Strands answer?

The spanframe is first and then the answer list will be below it.

FICTION GENRE

And here’s where you’ll find it on the board:

Here are all the answers:

ROMANCE

CRIME

WESTERN

HISTORIC

FANTASY

Well, I was looking for science-fiction, my favorite genre, but it didn’t make it. I didn’t realize that western fiction was its own subgenre, but I guess it makes sense. I was confused because I thought fiction would be the spanframe when it goes from one side to the other, but they wanted us to span genre as well.

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