Word puzzle enthusiasts navigating The New York Times games roster faced an unsettling collection of bugs and rodents on Tuesday, Oct. 27, as the outlet kicked off a sequence of holiday-inspired challenges. The release of Strands puzzle No. 968 leaned into seasonal chills with a subtle nod to spooky lore, challenging participants to identify unwanted household critters hidden inside the letter grid.
The New York Times announced on Monday that it would highlight several Halloween-themed puzzles across its catalog over the course of the week, CNET reported. While some daily games like Wordle remained untouched to avoid overly obvious solutions, Strands incorporated the holiday spirit through its thematic framing rather than overtly supernatural terms, CNET noted.
How the daily game works
Strands serves as an elevated, directional reimagining of standard word searches. Letters in the grid link together upward, downward, sideways and diagonally, allowing answers to bend and shift in multiple directions rather than running strictly in straight lines, Mashable reported. Unlike traditional word-finding activities, Strands does not give players an advance list of targets. Instead, the puzzle offers an enigmatic clue, requiring players to deduce the underlying subject entirely on their own.
To assist players who struggle to deduce the answers, the platform incorporates a hint system. Finding any three legitimate English words containing four or more letters unlocks an in-game hint that isolates and highlights the letters of one official theme word, according to CNET. A complete solution requires players to uncover every designated answer, utilizing every single letter on the board without leaving any unused tiles behind.
Every daily edition also contains a “spangram,” a standout thematic term or phrase that touches opposite sides of the grid horizontally or vertically, Mashable noted. The spangram describes the central concept uniting every other hidden word across the board.
Inside puzzle No. 968
For Tuesday’s puzzle, solvers received the theme prompt “Who you gonna call?”—a phrasing that playfully referenced the famous tagline from the film franchise “Ghostbusters,” CNET reported. Mashable noted that the prompt similarly carried the casual phrasing “Who ya gonna call?”
Rather than phantom adversaries, the actual answers centered entirely on household vermin and pests, according to Mashable. The horizontal spangram revealed inside the grid was “Exterminator.” CNET reported that tracing the spangram required beginning at the letter “E” positioned four rows down in the leftmost column, winding through the board in a path that created an arrow shape.
Solvers searching the remaining tiles had to locate six individual critters to complete the board. According to Mashable’s published solution, the required answers consisted of:
- Cockroaches
- Ants
- Rats
- Mice
- Ticks
- Termites
Global rollout and what comes next
Strands updates on a rolling schedule, publishing automatically at midnight depending on each player’s local time zone, The New York Times noted in its guide for puzzle No. 969. Because players in early time zones access puzzles hours ahead of North America, the newspaper publishes two daily editions of its “Strands Sidekick” column based on Eastern time to provide tips, answer keys, and discussion space for solvers across international borders.
With puzzle No. 968 resolved, players turned their attention to Wednesday’s game, puzzle No. 969, as the Times continued its week of seasonal puzzle offerings.
