The NYT Strands puzzle for Sunday, July 12, 2026, is #861. The theme is “In the Big Apple,” and the spangram is EMPIRESTATE.
All seven theme words and the full solution are below. Three spoiler-free hints come first.
Hint 1: Every word in today’s puzzle belongs to a single city. Not just any city – the one with its own nickname, its own energy, and its own rules about what a sandwich is supposed to be.
Hint 2: The words span everyday city life at street level: what you eat for breakfast, where you buy it, how you get across town, and the architectural feature outside your building that doubles as a front porch.
Hint 3: The spangram is ten letters. It names either the building that defines the city’s skyline or the state the city sits in – both answers lead to the same word.
Today’s NYT Strands Spangram
EMPIRESTATE
Today’s NYT Strands Theme Words – July 12, 2026:
BAGEL
BODEGA
BOROUGH
DELI
STOOP
SUBWAY
TAXI
Today’s puzzle is a love letter to New York City at street level. The theme word – “In the Big Apple” – cues the frame, and once it clicks, every word on the grid snaps into place. BAGEL and DELI are the food anchors: the breakfast round and the lunch counter that define New York’s culinary vernacular in a way that resists imitation anywhere else. BODEGA is the corner store, open late, stocked with essentials and something specific to the block. TAXI is the yellow cab. SUBWAY is the system underneath the city that moves eight million people daily and remains, against all odds, a point of civic pride.
BOROUGH and STOOP are the words most likely to slow solvers down. BOROUGH is accurate – New York City is divided into five: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island – but the word does not feel as immediately New York as BODEGA or TAXI does. It reads as a general municipal term before the puzzle’s framing pulls it into focus. STOOP is the other one: the raised front steps of a brownstone, the social architecture of a pre-air-conditioning city where residents sat outside on summer evenings. Non-New Yorkers may encounter the word without the specific residential weight it carries in the city.
The spangram, EMPIRESTATE, does double duty. It names the Empire State Building, the 102-story Art Deco skyscraper that has defined the Midtown skyline since 1931. It also names the state of New York, whose nickname – the Empire State – predates the building by well over a century. The puzzle does not need to choose between the two meanings; both are correct, and both are New York.
Yesterday’s Strands puzzle (#860, July 11, 2026) carried the theme “Fishy fare,” with the spangram CASSEROLE and strand words CHEESE, MILK, NOODLES, PEAS, PEPPER, SALT, SOUP, and TUNA. The full solution is in our July 11 Strands answer guide. Today’s NYT Connections #1127 answers are also live. NYT Strands resets daily at midnight ET.
