NYT Strands Hints and Answers for May 9: 'Garden Varieties'

Each morning, a small puzzle arrives to ask something simple of us: can we find the hidden order in apparent chaos? Today's NYT Strands puzzle, themed around spring vegetables, invites solvers to trace the logic of the season itself — radishes, lettuces, onions, artichokes, asparagus — through a grid of letters, guided by a single spanning word that makes the rest legible. It is a modest ritual, but rituals of pattern-finding have always been how humans make peace with complexity.