Strand puzzles just discussed in The New York Times find themselves about challenges of reputation and self-construal, with a wonderfully subtle theme punishing not merely vocabulary but also character. Starting the week with the edition of Strands demands more self-contemplation than usual, forcing solvers to somehow read beneath the surface of words and letters.
Whether you are a daily regular or a one-day visitor, today offers a challenging wordplay and insight behind it. The setup remains the same: a 6×8 word grid with all the words related to a single theme, supported by a single pangram taking up the board’s width. The real puzzle is to work through detours and deceptive hints to reach the single theme.
