NYT Strands today — hints, spangram and answers for game #194 (Friday, September 13 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 — "Boots and saddles" — is pretty easy to complete, once you have a handle on what it means.

Below, we've compiled some useful hints for Strands #194, 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 #194, so read on if you need a little help.

Warning: Spoilers lie ahead for Strands #194.

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

The official theme for NYT Strands #194 is... "Boots and saddles".

And here's an unofficial hint from me: "Wanted, dead or alive."

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

• HERON
• FUEL
• FOSTER
• FIRE
• SLOW
• WOES

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

Scroll down to find out what it is...

It's WESTERNS.

Today's Strands answers

So, what are today's Strands answers for game #194?

Drumroll, please...

• COWBOY
• SHERIFF
• DUEL
• SALOON
• OUTLAW
• BOUNTY
• HORSE

..and the spangram was WESTERNS.

Strands #194

“Boots and saddles”

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Hi Strands fans. Nothing too taxing here, as long as you're familiar with Western tropes (or, in my case, have spent too long playing Red Dead Redemption 2 ).

As soon as I saw the theme of "Boots and saddles", I was certain it was going to be about cowboys. In fact, when I saw the word "cowboys" spelt backwards from the top-right to the other side of the grid, I was sure it was going to be the spangram. It actually wasn't even an answer: it was just COWBOY without the 'S', but I found the actual spangram - WESTERNS - immediately below it.

From there, it was just a case of emptying my mind of every cowboy-movie cliche around. SHERIFF and DUEL rounded up the top half quickly enough, and then it was on to the bottom segment.

This was a bit trickier. But eventually I realized the double 'O' was likely part of SALOON, which made the word below it OUTLAW. That left just BOUNTY and HORSE to find on the left-hand side to neatly finish the puzzle, letting me ride off into the puzzle sunset for another day. Yeehaw.

Yesterday's Strands answers

Reading this in a later time zone? You can find the full article on yesterday's Strands answers for game #193 right here .