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Spangram Focus: Today’s spangram, CHRISTMASTREE, stretches across the grid, leading solvers to festive, holiday-inspired words.
Theme Words: Track down ORNAMENT, GARLAND, TINSEL, PRESENT, and STAR, all tied to Christmas decorations and cheer.
Puzzle Experience: NYT Strands offers delightful “aha” moments, balancing fun and challenge for both casual and expert solvers this holiday season.
Today's NYT Strands puzzle, with its Spangram CHRISTMASTREE, is a festive delight for the weekend. The grid is filled with holiday-related words, and the players are led to them by the Christmas tree, which is the Spangram itself; the words are ORNAMENT, GARLAND, and TINSEL.
With a well-balanced level of difficulty, the puzzle rewards solvers and requires focus, patience, and observation. This puzzle is suited to a warm Christmas weekend; it is a mixture of fun and mental exercise.
The New York Times' word search for new users is called Strands. Every day's problem focuses on the spangram strand that runs the concept through the grid.
Learn words by following the letters, and as recognition becomes resolution. It requires less force and more attention to detail, patience, memory, and the pure delight of putting things in place.
Also Read: Today’s NYT Strands Hints and Answers for December 18, 2025
The NYT Strands are such a fun and interesting way to challenge your mind daily with their captivating Spangrams. The answer for the Spangram of the day for the Strands on December 20, 2025, is CHRISTMASTREE.
Here is what the theme is about. The whole idea of the puzzle is to discover all the answers, including the spangram, a theme word that runs through the entire puzzle in a mix of diagonals and verticals.
Nonspangram answers are as follows:
RIBBON, TINSEL, LIGHTS, STAR, ORNAMENT, ANGEL.
The Strands puzzle in today's New York Times is a great brain teaser for the holiday season. The Spangram, CHRISTMASTREE, the main idea of the puzzle, runs through the grid, leading solvers to the associated discoveries.
By moving along the diagonals and through the vertical lines, every word related to the theme gets connected, and the board gets filled little by little.
The puzzle is a bit hard for observation and pattern recognition, but the ‘aha’ moments make it pleasant, relaxing and an ideal cognitive warm-up for the cold Christmas weekend.
