NYT Strands today — hints, spangram and answers for game #161 (Sunday, August 11 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 — "Home stretch?" — is extremely cryptic, and tricky even after you've established its meaning.

Below, we've compiled some useful hints for Strands #161, 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 #161, so read on if you need a little help.

Warning: Spoilers lie ahead for Strands #161.

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

The official theme for NYT Strands #161 is... "Home stretch?".

And here's an unofficial hint from me: "Extra rooms and extensions."

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

• COURSE
• CARET
• TANKS
• SANDY
• TAPE
• CREPE
• BEEPS

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

Scroll down to find out what it is...

It's BONUSSPACES.

Today's Strands answers

So, what are today's Strands answers for game #161?

Drumroll, please...

• DECK
• PATIO
• VERANDA
• SUNROOM
• BALCONY
• TERRACE

...and the spangram was BONUSSPACES.

Strands #161

“Home stretch?”

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Hi Strands fans. This one was really tricky. I began by assuming "Home stretch?" related to racing, especially when I found the word "courses" quite early on.

When that proved to be incorrect, to my shame I had to use two clues to figure out what was going on, as the first revealed answer - DECK - wasn't hugely helpful. It was only when the game gave me PATIO as the second that I realized this was about 'stretching the home'. Very clever, Strands.

Even then, it wasn't all plain sailing, in part due to the meandering spangram that snaked around the board. Instead, despite knowing what it was broadly about, I had to get more regular answers first. I found VERANDA along the top, first, followed by SUNROOM along the bottom.

BALCONY filled in the remaining area of the right-hand side, and cleared the path for the end of the spangram. Because of its length, BONUSSPACES moves around the board in a really uneven way - kudos if you got this early on!

That left just one word to find: TERRACE. It was spelt backwards in the bottom left-hand corner.

Phew. Hopefully tomorrow's will be a bit easier...

Yesterday's Strands answers

Reading this in a later time zone? You can find the full article on yesterday's Strands answers for game #160 right here .