By Akash Wadhwani. From the New York Times puzzle data, updated 1:30 AM ET. Today's puzzle is by Tracy Bennett.
Today's theme is “Day and night shift”. There are 4 theme words and a spangram, which touches two opposite sides of the board.
Hint 1: how long each theme word is
6 letters
10 letters
10 letters
11 letters
Hint 2: first letters
S····· — 6 letters
C········· — 10 letters
T········· — 10 letters
P·········· — 11 letters
Hint 3: the spangram
FALLEQUINOX
FNNARN
AOSVTO
LIIOEI
LTGERS
EQNHCS
IUIARE
TWNOGO
HCSXPR
Today's Strands answers, #1,123
FALLEQUINOX
SWITCH
CHANGEOVER
TRANSITION
PROGRESSION
The theme
The clue today is “Day and night shift”, 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-oldwoman, Beatrice Millar, took off her shoes, jumped in after a drowningman 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.