Strands is a brand new daily puzzle from the New York Times. A trickier take on the classic word search, you’ll need a keen eye to solve this puzzle.

Like Wordle, Connections, and the Mini Crossword, Strands can be a bit difficult to solve some days. There’s no shame in needing a little help from time to time. If you’re stuck and need to know the answers to today’s Strands puzzle, check out the solved puzzle below.

How to play Strands

You start every Strands puzzle with the goal of finding the “theme words” hidden in the grid of letters. Manipulate letters by dragging or tapping to craft words; double-tap the final letter to confirm. If you find the correct word, the letters will be highlighted blue and will no longer be selectable.

If you find a word that isn’t a theme word, it still helps! For every three non-theme words you find that are at least four letters long, you’ll get a hint — the letters of one of the theme words will be revealed and you’ll just have to unscramble it.

Every single letter on the grid is used to spell out the theme words and there is no overlap. Every letter will be used once, and only once.

Each puzzle contains one “spangram,” a special theme word (or words) that describe the puzzle’s theme and touches two opposite sides of the board. When you find the spangram, it will be highlighted yellow.

The goal should be to complete the puzzle quickly without using too many hints.

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s theme is “How poe-tic”

Here’s a hint that might help you: Edgar Allan

Today’s Strand answers

Today’s spanagram

We’ll start by giving you the spangram, which might help you figure out the theme and solve the rest of the puzzle on your own:

Today’s Strands answers

• NEVERMORE
• DREARY
• PONDERED
• MIDNIGHT
• WEAK
• WEARY

Connections is the latest puzzle game from the New York Times. The game tasks you with categorizing a pool of 16 words into four secret (for now) groups by figuring out how the words relate to each other. The puzzle resets every night at midnight and each new puzzle has a varying degree of difficulty. Just like Wordle, you can keep track of your winning streak and compare your scores with friends.

Some days are trickier than others. If you’re having a little trouble solving today’s Connections puzzle, check out our tips and hints below. And if you still can’t get it, we’ll tell you today’s answers at the very end.

How to play Connections

In Connections, you’ll be shown a grid containing 16 words — your objective is to organize these words into four sets of four by identifying the connections that link them. These sets could encompass concepts like titles of video game franchises, book series sequels, shades of red, names of chain restaurants, etc.

There are generally words that seem like they could fit multiple themes, but there’s only one 100% correct answer. You’re able to shuffle the grid of words and rearrange them to help better see the potential connections.

Each group is color-coded. The yellow group is the easiest to figure out, followed by the green, blue, and purple groups.

Pick four words and hit Submit. If you’re correct, the four words will be removed from the grid and the theme connecting them will be revealed. Guess incorrectly and it’ll count as a mistake. You only have four mistakes available until the game ends.

Hints for today’s Connections

We can help you solve today’s Connection by telling you the four themes. If you need more assistance, we’ll also give you one word from each group below.

Today’s themes

• FOOTBALL POSITIONS
• CABLE CHANNELS
• FICTIONAL CLOWNS
• WHAT “D” MIGHT STAND FOR

One-answer reveals

• FOOTBALL POSITIONS – CENTER
• CABLE CHANNELS – DISCOVERY
• FICTIONAL CLOWNS – HOMEY
• WHAT “D” MIGHT STAND FOR – DEFENSE

Today’s Connections answers

Still no luck? That’s OK. This puzzle is designed to be difficult.  If you just want to see today’s Connections answer, we’ve got you covered below:

• FOOTBALL POSITIONS – CENTER, GUARD, QUARTERBACK, SAFETY
• CABLE CHANNELS – DISCOVERY, HISTORY, NICKELODEON, OXYGEN
• FICTIONAL CLOWNS – HOMEY, JOKER, PENNYWISE, RONALD
• WHAT “D” MIGHT STAND FOR – DEFENSE, DEMOCRAT, DIMENSIONAL, DRIVE

Connections grids vary widely and change every day. If you couldn’t solve today’s puzzle, be sure to check back in tomorrow.

The Terrifier franchise, with its distinctively horrifying antagonist Art the Clown, is having a bit of a moment right now. Coinciding with Terrifier 3’s wildly successful opening weekend — the indie horror movie reportedly pulled in — game publisher has announced that a Terrifier video game is in the works and will be released next year. Terrifier: The ARTcade Game is being developed by indie studio and styled after a classic beat ‘em up. The teaser shows it to be a fitting combination of gory and goofy, with colorful pixel art and tons of over-the-top blood spatter.

According to the listing, you’ll get to play as Art the Clown and “unleash chaos” on several movie sets where films about him are being produced. There will also be local multiplayer modes. Terrifier: The ARTcade Game will be available for PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch and Xbox when it’s released in 2025.

Pokémon developer Game Freak has confirmed it suffered a breach as troves of internal materials pertaining to the franchise — from source codes to early and, in some cases, scrapped character designs — hit social media this weekend. In a published on Thursday (translated from Japanese), the company said it discovered its servers were hacked in August and that sensitive employee information had been leaked. It did not address the Pokémon leaks, though the bulk of this content appears to have been published online after the statement was released.

Leaked documents and images flooded and X after began dumping it all on Saturday afternoon. The “Teraleak” files, as some fans are calling it, allegedly include source codes for past games such as Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, codenames for the Switch 2 and the upcoming Gen 10 Pokémon games — “Ounce” and “Gaia,” respectively — references to an in-development Pokémon MMO, and internal discussions from design meetings. There are also details on the purported unreleased Detective Pikachu sequel and other planned Pokémon movies, as well as a new anime series.

The scope of the leak is enormous, exposing tons of beta character designs and concept art in addition to the source codes. Neither Nintendo nor The Pokemon Company has publicly acknowledged the leak yet. Engadget has reached out for comment. Game Freak said in its statement that it’s strengthening its security and apologized to those affected by the breach, noting that the unauthorized third-party accessed the personal information of over 2,600 current and former workers.

If the MSI Vision Elite RS could walk, it would walk into every room like it owned the place. It’s got attitude, it’s got flair, and it’s got the horsepower to back it up. It’s also got a price to match. If you’re looking for a desktop gaming PC to last for years, but still leave room for upgrades, this one is a strong contender.

The Vision Elite boasts powerful hardware, but a spec sheet doesn’t tell the full story. This desktop’s gorgeous curved glass panel houses a spacious interior, lit up with a cornucopia of RGB LEDs. While there are other curved glass cases on the market, most either use multiple glass panels to achieve the effect or add distracting button panels. MSI’s approach is minimalist, drawing focus directly to the internals. It’s not just a desktop. It’s a statement piece.

Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

Under the hood, the unit I tested comes with an Intel Core i9 14900KF CPU, 64 GB of DDR5 RAM, and the beastly Nvidia RTX 4090 graphics card. In terms of storage, there’s a 2-terabyte M.2 NVMe solid-state drive, with an extra slot for another M.2 SSD, plus four SATA 6G ports, giving you plenty of options to expand storage in the future.

As someone who’s been upgrading the same PC for 20 years, this thing ticks all my boxes for a prebuilt gaming PC. It’s powerful out of the box, has style that’s hard to replicate with off-the-shelf parts, and plenty of room to grow over the years.

Flourish and Flair

As soon as I turn on the Vision Elite RS, it commands attention from anyone in the room. The curved glass panel encompasses two sides of the PC, giving it almost an aquarium look. I half-expected to see exotic fish swimming around inside this thing. The striking RGB LEDs are crammed into every corner of the rig, with two rows of three RGB-laced fans along the side and top of the device, with a seventh light-up fan on the rear. The CPU uses a 360-millimeter liquid cooling system, but these fans still help ensure the system stays cool.

All the RGB lighting is a bit much. I wouldn’t recommend putting this thing in any room where people are likely to sleep or want to relax and watch TV unless you switch the lighting off. However, with a little tweaking to turn down the impact, it’s easily one of the most eye-catching PCs I’ve ever used.

It’s slick, eschewing the angular, edgy Gamer Aesthetic, and its open design makes it feel like it takes up less space than it does. This is particularly helpful since the Vision Elite RS is huge. At nearly 50 pounds, it’s a monster to lug around, so wherever you put it in your home, you’re probably going to want it to stay there.