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Today’s Strands puzzle taps into the season’s nostalgia, evoking the first day back in class.
The spangram SUPPLIES anchors the puzzle, connecting essentials like calculators, backpacks, and notebooks.
A timely grid for solvers who relish puzzles with everyday themes drawn from student life.
It’s August 25th, and the morning buzzes with the excitement of pencils sharpened and notebooks uncreased. Summer’s slow, lazy pace is shattered; alarms blare earlier, backpacks are heavier, and store aisles ring out with the frantic shopping of last-minute seekers. Along with this familiar pandemonium comes today’s New York Times Strands puzzle, innocently anchoring itself to the season. The theme is appropriately austere: Back to School.
There’s a timelessness to this moment. Maybe it’s the fresh scent of paper, the heft of a calculator, or the promise of a fresh school year, but these rituals bind generations together. This week’s Strands puzzle indulges in that nostalgia, filling the 6x8 grid with a small checklist of school necessities.
Strands is the NYT’s daily puzzle for newbies on a 6x8 grid. Every puzzle has a unifying theme, with words related to that concept concealed throughout the board. Find one, and it blinks blue. The center is the spangram, a bigger word or phrase that cuts across the board in yellow, binding all the answers together by one thread.
And if you are stuck? There’s a safety net. Find three ‘dead’ four-letter words, and the game provides a hint. But, much like navigating on the first day of school, the real fun is figuring things out, trying guesses, going on hunches, and enjoying the click of discovery when the pattern comes clear.
For August 25, the spangram is SUPPLIES, a word that immediately conjures up classroom aisles and backpacks full of equipment for the coming year.
This grid gathers the familiar friends of student life. Today’s solutions are:
CALCULATOR – Yet still the math sidekick of choice, decades later.
BACKPACK – The dependable holder of books, lunches, and secrets.
NOTEBOOKS – Pages ready to be filled with doodles, ideas, and scribbles.
LAPTOP – A new constant, where assignments, research, and notes meet.
FOLDERS – An easy protection against inevitable paper sprawl.
Every word testifies to the time-honored necessities of the scholarly quest, some ageless, some a product of the digital era.
As with the ritual of planning supplies before the first bell, Strand’s puzzle today builds word upon word. The smaller discoveries, FOLDERS, NOTES, fit in initially, followed by the bigger ones like CALCULATOR and BACKPACK. SUPPLIES then runs across the board, binding the theme together in vibrant yellow.
Today’s NYT Starnds puzzle is more than a distraction; it reminds me of the rhythms that indicate fresh starts. Whether entering a classroom for the first time or remembering it through a puzzle grid, today’s Strands embodies the anticipation, order, and excitement of back-to-school season.
Also Read: Today’s NYT Strands Hints and Answers for August 24 2025
