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Tom’s Guide
Tom’s Guide
Technology
Alan Martin

NYT Strands today — hints, spangram and answers for game #242 (Thursday, October 31 2024)

NYT Strands on a cellphone.
Strands today: Quick menu

Need a bit of help with NYT Strands today? Today's theme — "Trick or treat!" — is clearly seasonal, but may not be quite as obvious as it seems.

Below, we've compiled some useful hints for Strands #242, as well as the answers, should it come to that. We'll start off with some clues, before building up to the full answer for Strands #242, so read on if you need a little help.

Warning: Spoilers lie ahead for Strands #242.

Today's NYT Strands answer — Today's theme and hints

The official theme for NYT Strands #242 is... "Trick or treat!"

And here's an unofficial hint from me: "What are you going as?"

If you're still in the dark, here are some useful words to give you those valuable clue tokens:

  • TIRES
  • CENSUS
  • MEOW
  • PEST
  • PRESS
  • POSIT
  • MOLE
  • PLOW

Still struggling? The spangram will give you a hint about the connection word. Today, it starts with 'C' and ends with 'E'.

Scroll down to find out what it is...

It's COSTUME.

Today's Strands answers

So, what are today's Strands answers for game #242?

Drumroll, please...

  • MUMMY
  • WITCH
  • PUMPKIN
  • GHOST
  • PIRATE
  • CLOWN
  • PRINCESS
(Image credit: Alan Martin)

...and the spangram was COSTUME.

Strands #242

“Trick or treat!”

🔵🔵🔵🔵

🔵🟡🔵🔵

Hi Strands fans. A rather nice companion puzzle to yesterday's. That was all about candies, while today's Strands is, of course, about Halloween. But don't waste time looking for the word itself, as I did: it's not there. In fact, it would take me a while to get the spangram itself.

After failing to see "Halloween", I began the search for various monsters, cryptids and things that go bump in the night. I found MUMMY first, along the bottom, and WITCH to its right. PUMPKIN was immediately above it, and I felt sure that GHOST would be in there somewhere. Sure enough, I found it in the top half near the middle of the grid.

I couldn't see any more monsters - as it turns out there weren't any to find. But when I spotted PIRATE in the top left, it clicked: this was about party costumes, not the festival itself!

And there it was: the spangram. I connected COSTUME from left to right across the middle of the board.

Only two answers were left to find, and it's safe to say I wouldn't have figured them out without this epiphany. CLOWN was left in the bottom half, which left me connecting PRINCESS near the top to put another puzzle to bed.

Yesterday's Strands answers

Reading this in a later time zone? You can find the full article on yesterday's Strands answers for game #241 right here.

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