NYT Strands today — hints, spangram and answers for game #173 (Friday, August 23 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 — "The nose knows" — requires a little specialist knowledge to complete.

Below, we've compiled some useful hints for Strands #173, 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 #173, so read on if you need a little help.

Warning: Spoilers lie ahead for Strands #173.

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

The official theme for NYT Strands #173 is... "The nose knows".

And here's an unofficial hint from me: "Smelling great".

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

• MOODS
• VENAL
• DANES
• MOLE
• CREEDS
• SLAVES

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

Scroll down to find out what it is...

It's COMMONSCENTS.

Today's Strands answers

So, what are today's Strands answers for game #173?

Drumroll, please...

• MUSK
• LAVENDER
• SANDALWOOD
• CEDER
• ROSE
• LEMON

..and the spangram was COMMONSCENTS.

Strands #173

“The nose knows”

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Hi Strands fans. Another day, another topic I know nothing about. While it was pretty clear early on that "The nose knows" would be about perfumes and fragrances, it's not an area I would call myself a specialist in, which made finding terms like SANDALWOOD a bit on the tricky side.

It didn't help that the spangram of COMMONSCENTS is A) a pun, and B) one that starts in the middle of the board. Indeed, I found the word "scents" quite early on, but couldn't see how it extended into an answer that stretches across the whole grid.

All of which is a roundabout way of justifying how I found myself using a clue for my first turn, revealing the very unhelpful MUSK in the bottom-right corner.

Racking my brains, I realized that LAVENDER is a popular odor too, and I found that in the middle of the grid spelt backwards. SANDALWOOD followed, running down the right-hand side, and that opened up enough space for me to see the start of the spangram: COMMONSCENTS.

From there, it was just a case of filling in the gaps. The anagram "EDACR" in the top left had to be CEDAR, and that left two to find at the bottom. When I got ROSE, I just had to decode "MOELN" - which was either LEMON or "MELON". Given the latter doesn't smell of much, I correctly picked the former for another tricky win.

Yesterday's Strands answers

Reading this in a later time zone? You can find the full article on yesterday's Strands answers for game #172 right here .