Reference
How does the hint system work in NYT Strands?
NYT Strands gives you one hint for every three non-theme words you find on the board. A non-theme word is any ordinary English word of four letters or more that the puzzle accepts but that does not belong to the day’s theme, and there is no limit on how many hints you can earn this way.
What does a Strands hint actually reveal?
Spending a hint highlights the letters of one theme word on the grid — it does not spell the word out and it does not tell you which theme word it is. You still have to trace the letters in the correct order to bank the answer. That distinction matters: a hint reduces the search to one word’s worth of squares, but it does not solve anything for you.
Does using a hint cost anything?
Using a hint costs nothing. Strands has no score, no timer and no guess limit, so there is no penalty attached to hints beyond the effort of earning them. This is unlike Wordle, where every guess is one of six, and unlike Spelling Bee, where the score is the point.
Which words count towards the hint counter?
Any word of four or more letters that the puzzle’s dictionary accepts and that is not part of the theme set counts once. The dictionary is large and includes many words no ordinary player would think of, which is exactly why hunting at random is slow.
How do you earn hints quickly?
You earn hints quickly by sweeping one dense region of the grid for short, common words rather than searching the whole board for long ones. Three four-letter words in one corner is a hint; one eight-letter word anywhere is also a hint, and takes far longer to find.
Every daily page on this site publishes six non-theme words that are actually on that day’s board, chosen by filtering the puzzle’s accepted words against an English frequency ranking and then picking the combination that covers the most separate squares. Six is a starting set, not the whole board — the Strands word finder lists every non-theme word the day’s grid accepts, filterable by length and first letter. For August 3, 2026 the six are:
| Word | Letters | Starts at |
|---|---|---|
| SEASONAL | 8 | row 5, column 5 |
| INDICES | 7 | row 7, column 4 |
| LINGUAL | 7 | row 6, column 1 |
| EQUINE | 6 | row 1, column 5 |
| SOLON | 5 | row 2, column 1 |
| ELUSIVE | 7 | row 7, column 5 |
Finding all six is two hints, with the third only one word away.
Is using hints cheating?
The hint counter is part of the game as designed and carries no penalty, so using it is playing the game rather than working around it. The graded help on this site follows the same logic: the theme first, then the spangram’s length, then its position, then the answers, so you can stop at whatever rung you need. Today’s ladder is on the front page, and the underlying rules are in how to play NYT Strands.
Questions about Strands hints
How do I get a hint in Strands?
Hints are earned by finding words that are not part of the theme. Every three valid non-theme words of four letters or more fills the hint meter once, and a filled meter can be spent to light up the letters of one theme word.
How do the hints work in Strands?
A spent hint highlights the letters of one theme word on the board without spelling it out and without saying which theme word it is, so it shows where the word lives but still leaves you to trace it in the right order.
Is there a way to get hints in Strands?
Inside the game, the only way is the three-non-theme-words rule: there is no timer, no purchase and no daily hint allowance. Outside the game, a graded clue ladder — theme, then letter counts, then starting positions, then answers — lets you stop at the level of help you actually want.