The spangram for NYT Strands #882 on August 2, 2026 is AIMHIGH. The theme is “Eyes on the prize.” The six theme words are AMBITION, GOAL, INTENTION, OBJECTIVE, PLAN, and PURPOSE.
Three hints are below before the full reveal.
NYT Strands Hints – August 2, 2026 (#882)
Hint 1: Every theme word names something you have, form, or work toward – a desired outcome or the mental structure around it.
Hint 2: The six words are near-synonyms. The distinction between them is not about what they describe but about the degree of formality and the scale of what’s being sought.
Hint 3: The spangram is a two-word motivational phrase, compressed without a space, that the U.S. Air Force adopted as a recruiting slogan.
NYT Strands #882 Answer: AIMHIGH
Today’s theme is the cluster of words English uses for what one is working toward: AMBITION, GOAL, INTENTION, OBJECTIVE, PLAN, and PURPOSE. The spangram AIMHIGH – the phrase aim high, compressed into a single grid-spanning word – names the motivational posture that all six theme words describe when held together. The U.S. Air Force has used “Aim High” as its recruiting slogan since 1981, but the phrase belongs to a much older tradition of aspirational language that runs through self-help literature, athletic coaching, and political speeches. The theme “Eyes on the prize” adds a second layer: not just having ambitions, but keeping focus on the desired outcome rather than being distracted by the difficulty of getting there. The phrase itself entered popular consciousness as the title of a landmark 1987 PBS documentary series on the American civil rights movement.
The puzzle’s structural challenge is that all six theme words are near-synonyms. Distinguishing between GOAL and OBJECTIVE, or between INTENTION and PURPOSE, requires fine-grained thinking about emphasis rather than meaning. In the grid, the risk is that solvers identify the category early – these are all things you aim at – but struggle to confirm which words belong and which are distractors, because so many adjacent words (TARGET, AIM, DESIRE, WISH) could plausibly fit the frame.
All Six Strand Words Explained
AMBITION is the most charged word in the group. It names not just a goal but the drive behind it – the appetite for achievement, status, or success that motivates sustained effort over time. Ambition can be admired or viewed with suspicion: ambitious figures in literature are often tragic precisely because ambition outruns judgment. From Latin ambitio, meaning going around or canvassing, the word originally described politicians seeking votes by circulating among the public before acquiring its modern psychological meaning.
GOAL is the most common word in the set, and the one most solvers will find first. It names the specific outcome sought – the thing that, once achieved, marks success. In sport it is literal: the structure into which a ball must be sent. In everyday use it has become the dominant word for personal and professional targets, largely displacing the more formal OBJECTIVE in casual speech. Its brevity in the grid makes it an early solve.
INTENTION points to the mental commitment before the action. You form an intention, declare an intention, act with intention. The word emphasizes the deliberate quality of a purpose – that the outcome being sought is the result of a conscious decision rather than an accident or habit. In law, intention is a term of art: criminal liability often depends on whether the accused intended the outcome of their action. From Latin intentio, a stretching or straining toward something.
OBJECTIVE carries a more formal register than GOAL and is the default word in military planning, corporate strategy, and academic writing. It implies a specific, measurable outcome within a larger operation. In military usage, securing the objective means taking and holding the specific position that was the mission’s aim. The word’s spread into business and management language happened largely in the 20th century, through the influence of management theory that borrowed military vocabulary for organizational planning.
PLAN is the word in the group that names the structure around a goal rather than the goal itself: a plan is the map from where you are to where you want to be. The distinction matters in the grid. A plan is not quite what you aim for – it is what you follow to get there. Its inclusion among the theme words signals that the puzzle is grouping these terms loosely, under the broad umbrella of purposeful forward motion, rather than distinguishing precisely between end-states and the paths to them.
PURPOSE goes deepest. A purpose is not just what you want to achieve but why you want to achieve it – the underlying reason that gives the goal its meaning. People speak of finding their purpose, of living with purpose, of a sense of purpose that sustains effort through difficulty. From Old French pourpos, from a Latin root meaning to put forward. PURPOSE is also the longest theme word in today’s set and may be the last one confirmed, both because of its length in the grid and because its slight distinction from INTENTION and OBJECTIVE takes a moment to locate.
Yesterday, Strands #881 on August 1 carried the theme “As if!” with spangram GETREAL and six words for something absurd or unbelievable. Before that, Strands #880 on July 31 used LEOTHELION as its spangram under the theme “Summer sign,” grouping six Leo zodiac personality traits.
