NYT Strands #868 answers for Sunday, July 19, 2026: the theme is “Big Talk,” the spangram is SUPER SIZE IT, and the five strand words are BEHEMOTH, COLOSSUS, GIANT, LEVIATHAN, and MAMMOTH.
Hints (before the answer)
- The theme is two words – a common instruction and a size category you’d see on a fast-food menu.
Every strand word is a synonym for something extremely large.
Two of the five strand words come from ancient languages – one Hebrew, one Greek.
One-tusked word is also a species of prehistoric elephant.
Spangram: SUPER SIZE IT
The spangram SUPER SIZE IT connects Sunday’s theme both literally and culturally. As a fast-food command, it entered mainstream English via McDonald’s upselling language in the 1990s before the practice was discontinued following Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 documentary. As a concept, it now travels well beyond the drive-through: “super-sizing” describes any form of aggressive scaling, from data centres to military budgets. The phrase spans the grid and encodes the theme instruction: make everything bigger.
Strand Words: BEHEMOTH, COLOSSUS, GIANT, LEVIATHAN, MAMMOTH
BEHEMOTH and LEVIATHAN are the puzzle’s oldest words. BEHEMOTH appears in the Book of Job as an enormous land creature – scholars debate whether the text describes a hippopotamus, an elephant, or a mythological beast – while LEVIATHAN is the great sea monster of the same text, later adopted by Thomas Hobbes as the title of his 1651 treatise on political sovereignty. Both words have been in continuous English use for centuries, migrating from scriptural imagery into secular shorthand for any institution or entity of overwhelming scale.
COLOSSUS derives from the Greek “kolossos,” a giant statue, most famously the Colossus of Rhodes – one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the likely inspiration for the word’s modern meaning. MAMMOTH traces to the extinct Pleistocene elephant Mammuthus, whose frozen specimens began turning up in Siberian permafrost in the 18th century. The animal’s sheer size made its name a natural adjective. GIANT is the set’s most everyday word – from Old French via Latin – and the easiest to place once the theme is visible.
Yesterday’s Strands #867 theme was “A healthy breakfast,” with spangram BOWLOFGRANOLA. Today’s Wordle #1855 answer for July 18 was BOOTH. The NYT Connections #1133 answers for July 18 are also live.
