NYT Strands today — hints, spangram and answers for game #134 (Monday, July 15 2024)

1. Today's hints

2. Today's answer

3. Yesterday's answer

Need a bit of help with NYT Strands today? Today's puzzle theme — "Give it the ol' college try" — is really hard if you happen to be playing from outside the United States.

Below, we've compiled some useful hints for Strands #134, as well as the answers, should it come to that. We'll start off with some clues, before building up to the full answer for Strands #134, so read on if you need a little help.

Warning: Spoilers lie ahead for Strands #134.

Today's NYT Strands answer — Today's theme and hints

The official theme for NYT Strands #134 is... "Give it the ol' college try".

And here's an unofficial hint from me: "Degrees of difficulty".

If you're still in the dark, here are some useful words to give you those valuable clue tokens:

• WEEK
• WORK
• RIVERS
• TONES
• STREET
• BORE
• WORD
• WRENS

Still struggling? The spangram will give you a hint about the connection word. Today, it starts with 'U' and ends with 'S'.

Scroll down to find out what it is...

It's UNIVERSITIES.

Today's Strands answers

So, what are today's Strands answers for game #134?

Drumroll, please...

• DUKE
• BROWN
• TEMPLE
• NORTHWESTERN
• RICE
• TUFTS

...and the spangram was UNIVERSITIES.

Strands #134

“Give it the ol' college try”

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Hi Strands fans. Apologies in advance for my ignorance here: as someone educated in the UK, and having never lived in the United States, I can't say I know of many American universities beyond Harvard, Yale, Princeton and MIT - none of which feature here.

That made today's puzzle really tough, and I actually had to use a clue on my first turn, which revealed DUKE - an institution I actually had heard of. BROWN to its left was also one I was familiar with, but I didn't recognize TEMPLE, so it was just as well it was spelt out for me to complete the bottom half.

UNIVERSITIES was the spangram that snaked immediately above those three words to divide the board in two, leaving three answers to find in the top half.

After trying 'Western', I realized this was part of the longer NORTHWESTERN, which mercifully took up the majority of the top half. I had nine letters left to find two answers.

RICE is another one I was unfamiliar with, but that neatly left TUFTS, which I did know of.

That was really tricky for me. It really underlines how you're immediately in trouble if you don't know the subject matter of the theme with Strands. Hopefully tomorrow's will be back in my wheel house...

Yesterday's Strands answers

Reading this in a later time zone? You can find the full article on yesterday's Strands answers for game #133 right here .