Strands #6
“FRAGILE: handle with care”
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Last time playing it. I hate it.

With Strands, you don’t poke around in a sea of letters for any and every word, with some letters never to be used. Instead, you look for something specific that fills the space in a meaningful way. Here’s a snippet from our notes on the game: “Imagine digging for fossils: When you find a rib cage, it may tell you a skull is near. You’re not just uncovering, say, 20 words. You’re uncovering the clever bigger picture created by those words.”

In an early version of the game, we tested a puzzle whose spangram — the term that ties together all the other themed answers on a Strands board — was FAIRY TALE. Other theme words included PRINCE and FROG. FROG appeared horizontally on the board from right to left. I highlighted it quickly during a demo and didn’t learn until later that a couple of my coworkers had thought that GORF was a character from some fairy tale they had yet to read. They just went with it — no questions asked. I love that our team can see nonsense like GORF and, rather than let doubt take the wheel, trust in the process enough to believe that GORF is something real and will make sense later.

Strands #10
“One thousand followers”
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OK, I still do get it. Aside from the spanagram, I didn't find a single word without a clue.

Strands #10
“One thousand followers”
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I had to use 3 hints and I still don't know what the theme is.

Spoiler alert ....





Theme is words that follow "grand ____" grand jury, grand slam, etc. And if you do the spangram last, it's the grand finale.

And grand is also a reference to 1000.