Once you locate NOTSOHOT, the rest becomes easier
Each morning, a small ritual of wordplay invites players to pause and engage with language as a kind of seasonal mirror — today, the New York Times Strands puzzle for December 23, 2025, reflects winter itself, asking solvers to trace cold through a grid of letters. The puzzle's hidden spine, NOTSOHOT, carries a quiet double meaning: the language of illness folded inside the language of weather, a reminder that the words we reach for in discomfort often rhyme with the world outside. In a season of short days and long pauses, these daily puzzles offer a small, forgiving structure — no timer, no failure, only the patient search for what fits.
- The winter theme arrives with a chill built into the clue itself — 'Br-r-r-r-r!' — signaling that today's puzzle demands solvers think in degrees of cold.
- The spangram NOTSOHOT creates the central tension: a phrase that sounds casual but hides a layered meaning, bridging sickness and cold weather in a single spanning word.
- Seven theme words — CHILLY, POLAR, COLD, GLACIAL, FREEZING, FRIGID, and COOL — are scattered across the board, each occupying a distinct corner or zone, requiring spatial as much as linguistic thinking.
- Unlike Wordle or Connections, Strands offers a pressure-free path: unlimited guesses and a hint system that rewards persistence over perfection.
- The puzzle resolves only when every letter on the board is accounted for, turning completion into a satisfying act of total coverage rather than mere word-finding.
The New York Times Strands puzzle for December 23, 2025, arrives dressed for the season — its thematic clue a shivering 'Br-r-r-r-r!' and its seven hidden words a vocabulary of cold: CHILLY, POLAR, COLD, GLACIAL, FREEZING, FRIGID, and COOL.
At the heart of the puzzle is the spangram NOTSOHOT, a phrase that does double duty. Ask someone how they feel when they're sick, and this is what they might say — but traced across the board in yellow, it also anchors the winter weather theme and makes the surrounding words easier to locate. Finding the spangram first is the standard strategy, and today it pays off.
The seven theme words are distributed across the grid with deliberate geometry: CHILLY in the upper left, POLAR beneath it, COLD following in sequence, GLACIAL anchoring the bottom left, FREEZING in the upper right, FRIGID at the bottom right, and COOL filling the space between.
For newcomers, Strands is a forgiving game — no countdown, no loss condition. Players connect adjacent letters in any direction to form words, and if they stall, submitting three valid non-theme words unlocks a hint revealing one theme word's letters. The puzzle ends when every letter on the board has been claimed, and the final screen offers a shareable card marking each find. For daily players, bookmarking the hints page keeps the ritual easy to maintain, puzzle by puzzle, morning by morning.
The New York Times Strands puzzle for Tuesday, December 23, 2025, arrives with a winter theme that cuts straight to the bone: "Br-r-r-r-r!" The puzzle asks you to find seven words related to cold weather, all hidden within a grid of letters that you'll need to trace in any direction—up, down, left, right, or diagonal.
The real key to solving this puzzle, as with most Strands games, is finding the spangram first. Today, that word is NOTSOHOT, a three-word phrase that answers a simple question: if someone asked how you felt when you were sick, this is what you might say back. Once you locate NOTSOHOT spanning across the board in yellow, the rest of the puzzle becomes considerably easier to navigate.
The seven theme words you're hunting for are CHILLY, POLAR, COLD, GLACIAL, FREEZING, FRIGID, and COOL. Each one describes a state of coldness, arranged across the board in a pattern that the puzzle's designer has carefully constructed. CHILLY sits in the upper left corner. POLAR nestles below it. COLD follows in turn. GLACIAL anchors the bottom left. FREEZING appears in the upper right. FRIGID ends in the bottom right corner. COOL completes the set somewhere in between.
If you're new to Strands or need a refresher on how the game works, here's the structure: you're given a game board filled with letters and a thematic clue. Your job is to find words that fit that theme by connecting adjacent letters. Unlike Wordle or Connections, Strands cannot be lost—there's no limit to your guesses, no timer ticking down. You simply keep submitting words until you've found them all. If you get stuck, you can submit any valid four-letter word that isn't part of the theme, and three such submissions will unlock a hint that reveals all the letters of one theme word, though you'll still need to trace them in the correct order.
The puzzle is solved once every letter on the board has been used, meaning you've identified the spangram and all seven theme words. When you finish, the game shows you a shareable card with blue dots for each theme word you found, a yellow dot for the spangram, and lightbulb icons for any hints you needed along the way. For those who play Strands regularly, bookmarking the daily hints page makes it easy to return each morning and catch up on any puzzles you've missed.
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
So the spangram is NOTSOHOT—that's a phrase, not a single word. Does that change how you look for it on the board?
It does, actually. You're still tracing letters in sequence, but you're thinking of it as three words compressed together. The puzzle treats it as one continuous path, so you might find NOT, then SO, then HOT all connected in a line across the grid.
And the theme is just "cold words." That seems straightforward compared to some of the more abstract themes I've seen.
It is straightforward, which is probably intentional for December 23rd. People are busy, distracted. A puzzle with a clear, literal theme lets you solve it without overthinking. But straightforward doesn't mean easy—finding seven different cold-related words in one grid still takes patience.
If I can't find a word, I'm supposed to submit random four-letter words to unlock hints. That seems like a strange mechanic.
It's actually clever. It prevents you from just guessing wildly at theme words. You have to think about what other valid words might be hiding in the grid—words that aren't part of the puzzle's theme. Once you've found three of those, you've earned a hint. It rewards observation and vocabulary knowledge.
What happens if I find the spangram first, like you did?
Everything clicks into place faster. The spangram usually spans a significant portion of the board, so once you see it highlighted in yellow, you know which letters are already accounted for. That narrows down where the theme words can be, and suddenly the puzzle feels less overwhelming.