The NYT Strands answer today, for Tuesday, August 25, 2026, solves puzzle #905. The theme is “Enjoying nature” and the spangram is TAKEAHIKE.
That spangram is an insult doing an honest day’s work. Said to a person, take a hike means go away. Stretched across this board it means the opposite, and it is the only entry in the puzzle that is a phrase rather than a piece of kit or terrain.
Strands Hints Today, August 25, 2026 (#905)
- The theme is an activity, not a landscape.
- Two theme words are things you carry or follow. The rest is what you walk through.
- The spangram is three short words run together, and aimed at a person it is rude.
- The longest theme word is nine letters and names the place where the walking starts.
- The shortest is four letters and is the plainest word on the board.
Strands Spangram Today: TAKEAHIKE
The spangram is TAKEAHIKE, nine letters, three words with the spaces removed. It is the entry that names the theme rather than belonging to it, which is why it reads as filler while you are still hunting.
It is also the reason the theme title is worth reading twice. “Enjoying nature” is neutral and slightly dull, and it is deliberately not the phrase the constructor was thinking of.
Strands Answers Today: All Theme Words (#905)
| Theme word | Letters |
|---|---|
| TAKEAHIKE (spangram) | 9 |
| TRAILHEAD | 9 |
| WILDLIFE | 8 |
| CANTEEN | 7 |
| MARKER | 6 |
| WOODS | 5 |
| PATH | 4 |
| Total | 48 |
The Letter Count Proves the List Is Complete
A Strands board is six columns by eight rows, which is 48 squares, and every square belongs to a theme word. Add today’s up and you get 48 exactly: nine for the spangram, then nine, eight, seven, six, five and four.
That is worth doing before you trust any answer list, including this one. If the words you have found leave squares spare, you have the wrong words. If they overrun, one of them is not a theme word at all.
Where Puzzle #905 Goes Wrong
On PATH and MARKER, which are the two entries doing the least work. Both are ordinary enough to sit in a grid of loose letters without announcing themselves, and neither is obviously about hiking until the theme is already solved. A trail MARKER is the blaze or cairn that tells you that you are still on the route, and that meaning only arrives once you have TRAILHEAD.
TRAILHEAD is the one to hunt first. Nine letters is more than a sixth of the board, it is unambiguous, and finding it converts the vague theme title into something you can search against.
CANTEEN is the small trap. It is a water bottle here, but it is also a works cafeteria, and a solver who reads it that way will file it under food and stop looking for a connection to walking.
Is Strands #905 Hard?
Easier than most. The vocabulary is common, none of the six words is obscure, and the theme title does almost no misdirecting. What makes it slower than it looks is that four of the entries are plain nouns, which is exactly the kind of word the eye slides past when it is scanning for something clever.
What we cannot give you is the path each word traces through the grid. Strands lays its letters out in a fixed board, but the shapes the words make are the part of the puzzle worth keeping, and a diagram of them would take the game away rather than help you finish it. The words are the answer. The route is yours.
Yesterday’s Strands answer was COOKIEJAR, a board where one thirteen-letter cookie ate more than a quarter of the squares on its own.
Today’s other puzzles: Wordle #1893, Connections #1171 and the Mini Crossword. You can play the puzzle itself at The New York Times.
