Each day, the New York Times Strands puzzle offers players a small meditation disguised as a word game — and today's theme, 'Practically Paleolithic,' turns the grid into a quiet reckoning with time itself. Words like Ancient, Archaic, and Bygone lie hidden in a lattice of letters, waiting to be traced by those willing to slow down and look. The spangram 'That's Old News' stretches across the whole board, a wry reminder that what feels distant is never entirely gone — only rearranged.
NYT Strands Sept. 23: Hints and answers for 'That's Old News' puzzle
Every letter in the grid belongs to an answer.
Mark
So this is just a word search, right? Find the words, move on?
Mimi
It's more constrained than that. Every single letter in the grid has to be part of an answer. There are no leftover tiles. That's what makes it harder than a traditional word search.
Luke
But the source doesn't actually tell us how many letters are in the grid, or how many words there are beyond the five theme words and the spangram. We know what the answers are, but we don't know the actual puzzle layout.
Mark
Why does the theme matter? Why not just have random words?
Mimi
The theme is what ties everything together. Today it's about old things, the past. That's the lens through which you're supposed to think about the puzzle.
Luke
Though "Practically Paleolithic" is pretty on-the-nose as a hint. It's not exactly opaque. The source says the hints are supposed to be opaque, but this one basically tells you the answer.
Mark
How long does it actually take to solve?
Mimi
The source says ten or more minutes, but that's probably for people who are stuck. Some people will get it faster.
Luke
Again, that's not really confirmed. The source says Strands "takes a little longer" than Wordle, but there's no actual data on average solve times. It's an estimate.
Mark
And if you can't solve it, you just look up the answers?
Mimi
Yes. Mashable provides hints at different levels, and then the full word list if you need it. No penalty for looking.
Luke
The source doesn't say whether the Times game itself penalizes you for hints or looking things up. That's just how Mashable presents it.
Der Puls
- Strands raises the stakes beyond Wordle's familiar rhythm, asking players to trace words that bend and twist through a grid in any direction — no straight lines guaranteed.
- Every letter in the grid must belong to an answer, creating a tight, unforgiving design where nothing is filler and no tile can be ignored.
- Today's theme — words for things long past — adds a layer of conceptual pressure: you must think historically to think spatially.
- The spangram 'That's Old News' runs horizontally across the entire grid, anchoring all other answers and revealing the puzzle's full architecture only when found.
- For players who stall, Mashable offers a graduated lifeline — theme hint, then spangram direction, then the full answer list — so no one is left stranded for long.
Each day, the New York Times Strands puzzle offers players a small meditation disguised as a word game — and today's theme, 'Practically Paleolithic,' turns the grid into a quiet reckoning with time itself. Words like Ancient, Archaic, and Bygone lie hidden in a lattice of letters, waiting to be traced by those willing to slow down and look. The spangram 'That's Old News' stretches across the whole board, a wry reminder that what feels distant is never entirely gone — only rearranged.
The New York Times Strands puzzle for September 23 is built around a single, resonant idea: the language of things that have outlasted their moment. The theme, 'Practically Paleolithic,' points players toward words that carry the weight of age — Ancient, Archaic, Bygone, Primeval, Timeworn — each one a small monument to elapsed time.
Unlike Wordle, which asks for a single five-letter guess repeated up to six times, Strands presents a full grid of letters where words can run in any direction and bend through unexpected paths. Every tile belongs to an answer; nothing is wasted. This constraint makes the puzzle feel almost architectural — the constructor must account for every character, and the solver must account for every possibility.
Tying it all together is the spangram, a phrase that spans the entire grid horizontally or vertically and captures the day's theme in one stroke. Today's is 'That's Old News' — a knowing, slightly sardonic phrase that earns its place at the center of a puzzle about antiquity.
Strands rewards patience over speed. There's no timer, no penalty for lingering. Some players will find their way through in minutes; others will spend considerably longer tracing and backtracking through the grid. For those who need a hand, Mashable structures its help in stages — a thematic nudge first, then a directional clue for the spangram, and finally the complete answer list for anyone ready to move on. The game, like the words it hides, is designed to meet you wherever you are.
The New York Times Strands puzzle for September 23 invites players into a theme about the passage of time—words that describe things long gone, relics of earlier eras. The game itself is a step up in complexity from the Times' other daily offerings. Where Wordle asks you to guess a five-letter word in six tries, Strands demands something more intricate: you're given a grid of letters and asked to find words hidden within it, connected by adjacent tiles that can run up, down, left, right, or diagonally. The catch is that words don't have to move in straight lines. They can bend and twist through the grid in unexpected shapes, turning the familiar word-search into something that requires both pattern recognition and lateral thinking.
Every letter in the grid belongs to an answer. There are no orphaned tiles, no red herrings. This constraint forces a kind of elegant puzzle design—the constructor must make every single character count. Beyond the individual words, there's always a spangram, a phrase that captures the day's theme and stretches across the entire grid in one direction, either horizontally or vertically. Today, that spangram is horizontal: "That's Old News."
The theme itself is straightforward enough for anyone with even a passing interest in history. The words you're hunting for all describe things from the distant past. Ancient. Archaic. Bygone. Primeval. Timeworn. Each one carries the weight of age, the sense of something that has outlived its moment. The hint—"Practically Paleolithic"—is a playful nudge toward this temporal direction, suggesting that the further back you think, the closer you are to understanding what connects these answers.
Strands takes longer to solve than Wordle or Connections, the Times' other daily games. There's no timer, no pressure to finish in a set number of attempts. Instead, the puzzle rewards patience and the willingness to stare at a grid until patterns emerge. Some players will crack it in a few minutes. Others might spend ten or more, tracing paths through the letters, testing whether a sequence of tiles actually forms a word, backtracking when a promising route leads nowhere.
For those who don't have that kind of time, or who find themselves genuinely stuck, Mashable offers a tiered approach to help. You can start with the theme hint—words related to time—and try to solve from there. If you need more, there's the spangram hint, which tells you the direction it runs. And if you're ready to give up the puzzle entirely, the full word list is there: Ancient, Archaic, Bygone, Primeval, Timeworn, and the spangram itself. The game doesn't penalize you for looking. It's designed to be played at your own pace, with as much or as little assistance as you need to get through it and move on to whatever comes next.
Bemerkenswerte Zitate
Words can be made from linked letters—up, down, left, right, or diagonal, but words can also change direction, resulting in quirky shapes and patterns.— Mashable's explanation of Strands mechanics
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