NYT Strands challenges players to “make it work” with a theme on creative solutions
The spangram FIGUREOUT ties together clever and calculated answers
Theme words reflect innovation and strategic thinking: FINAGLE, CONTRIVE, and NEGOTIATE
It’s Tuesday, June 17, and as the week’s gears start turning more rapidly, today’s puzzle is a different type of challenge. The puzzle does not require speed or noise, but strategy. It’s like ironing out the folds in a complicated plan, or fitting together a jigsaw puzzle with no box picture. The New York Times Strands puzzle for the day does not scream its secrets; you need to figure them out.
With some careful consideration and a dash of cleverness, the solutions begin to reveal themselves. Today’s puzzle is akin to a drawing slowly emerging from nothing. The theme of today is not about raw strength; it’s about making things work even when they do not seem to fit initially.
Today’s puzzle honors crafty solutions, the ingenuity that coaxes order out of disorder. It’s not perfection, it’s forward motion. These words capture the ways we bend, stretch, and sometimes twist things into form. Whether you’re smoothing a negotiation or engineering a workaround, this puzzle is an acknowledgment of human ingenuity.
You won’t find easy answers here, just as in life, the secret is to keep shifting, keep refiguring. These are the intellectual cogs that turn behind each good plan.
The Strands grid is an 8x6 board of scrambled letters. Your goal is to reveal seven words that relate to the topic. Discover one, and it shines blue. Discover the middle thread, the spangram, a word that runs from one end of the grid to the other, and it glows yellow, holding the entire puzzle together.
It’s the cornerstone of today’s theme. To make something work, you’ve got to figure it out. This word winds its way across the board, tying every other piece into place.
FINAGLE – To get something through cleverness or trickery.
FINESSE – The art of handling a situation delicately and skillfully.
CONTRIVE – To plan or devise with ingenuity.
ENGINEER – To skillfully design or orchestrate a result.
NEGOTIATE – To locate a feasible way across contrary sides.
Today’s Strands is not about raw solving capacity. It’s about thinking laterally, attempting again, and getting a kick out of making it work. Like fixing a real-world problem with duct tape and determination, these words are testaments to innovative problem-solving.
Before you charge into Tuesday’s work, take a moment to admire the puzzle you just solved. Occasionally, the most effective answers are not what you do know, but what you deduce.