Strands #1,173
November 5, 2026Today's theme is “Handle with care”. There are 6 theme words and a spangram, which touches two opposite sides of the board.
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Hint 1: how long each theme word is
- 4 letters
- 5 letters
- 5 letters
- 6 letters
- 7 letters
- 9 letters
Hint 2: first letters
- W··· — 4 letters
- B···· — 5 letters
- F···· — 5 letters
- G····· — 6 letters
- D······ — 7 letters
- C········ — 9 letters
Hint 3: the spangram
- GIVEMEABREAK
Today's Strands answers, #1,173
The theme
The clue today is “Handle with care”, and every theme word belongs to it. If you are stuck, the quickest way in is usually to find the spangram first, because it touches two opposite sides of the board, so it is long, and finding it takes a lot of letters out of play.
Strands hides a theme. This one hides a headline.
One real news sentence a day, twenty to thirty words, something that actually happened. Keep the five words a headline would keep and let the rest go. Here is yesterday's, solved.
At Camden Lock, a 71-year-old woman, Beatrice Millar, took off her shoes, jumped in after a drowning man and saved him by holding his head above water.
Five tries. blue is the right word in the right place, orange is one of the five sitting somewhere else, grey is not one of them. The result beats the process, a name or a job beats a place, and the little words never count.
How you finish decides which sticker you keep.
