If youre looking for hints and answers for Strands for Saturday, September 13, 2025, read onIll share some clues and tips, and finally the solution to the puzzle with the theme Better than good.

For an easy way to come back to our Strands hints every day, bookmark this page. You can also find our past hints there as well, in case you want to know what you missed in a previous puzzle. (If you play Wordle, Connections, or Quordle, check out our hints for those games, too.)

Below, Ill give you some oblique hints at todays Strands answers. And farther down the page, Ill reveal the spangram and the answers. Scroll slowly and take just the hints you need!

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Credit: Strands/NYT Hint for the spangram in todays Strands puzzleTony the Tiger catchphrase.

Hint for the theme words in todays Strands puzzleThey all fit in a fill-in-the-blank structure with a word that means better than good.

BEWARE: Spoilers follow for todays Strands puzzle!Were about to give away the answers to todays Strands puzzle.

What is the spangram in todays Strands?Todays spangram is THEYREGREAT.

What are the theme words in todays Strands?The theme words today are: EXPECTATIONS, PLAINS, AUNTS, LAKES, MINDS, APES.

Heres what the board looks like when the puzzle is solved:

Credit: Strands/NYT How I solved todays StrandsBetter than good makes me think of the word great, probably because of those old Frosted Flakes commercials.

I see the word EXPECTATIONS along the left edge, and its a hit. That probably goes with great before it to make Great Expectations, the title of the Charles Dickens book.

I see the word GREAT to the right of EXPECTATIONS. Its the end of the spangram: THEYREGREAT.

PLAINS is in the bottom left. (Great Plains, the region in North America.)

LAKES is along the right edge. (Great Lakes.)

AUNTS is in the upper right corner. (Great aunts, a family member.)

What do you think so far? MINDS is below LAKES. (Great minds, which think alike in the common idiom.)

Lastly, APES. (Great apes is the term for a group of primates which includes humans.)

Strands #559 Better than good How to play StrandsYou can find the Strands game on the New York Times website and in the NYT Games app.

When you start playing, youll see a game board with an assortment of letters, flanked by a clue that gives a hint at the boards themethis will be a phrase, like Better with age. Your job is to find the hidden words within the board that reflect the puzzles theme.

A crossword crossed with a word searchThe most important word to find is the spangram, a word that more explicitly states the puzzles theme. (For example, the spangram for the puzzle with the theme "Better with age" is FERMENTED, which describes products that are, you guessed it, better with age.) The spangram will span the entire game board, either from left to right or top to bottom (hence the name). When you find the spangram, it will be highlighted in yellow. Solving the spangram usually makes the rest of the puzzle much easier to complete.

In Strands, words can travel any direction (up, down, left, right, and diagonal), and you will only use each letter once. There is only one correct solution. When you correctly identify one of the puzzles words (for example, KOMBUCHA, MISO, or KIMCHI), it will be highlighted in blue.

If you are struggling to solve the puzzle, you can submit any non-theme words you see (as long as they are four letters or more) to receive credit toward a single hint. If you submit three non-theme words, the Hint button will be clickable; if you click it, all of the letters in one of the theme words will be highlighted for you. You will still have to link these highlighted letters in the right order to form one of the theme words. If there is already a hint on the board and you use another hint before solving for that word, that words letter order will be revealed.

How to win StrandsUnlike Connections and Wordle, you cannot fail Strands. When you submit guesses, you will either correctly identify an answer, receive credit toward a hint, or the text will shake back and forth, indicating that the word you submitted is too short or not valid. You can't run out of guesses, and there is no time limit.

You win when youve correctly used all the letters on the board, meaning that you have identified the spangram and all of the theme words. Like other NYT games, upon solving the puzzle, you will see a shareable card that indicates how you performed that day: blue dots indicate theme words you found, the yellow dot indicates when you found the spangram, and a lightbulb indicates words that you received a hint for.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to yesterday's Strands.