Today's Strands: Quick Menu
Need a little help with NYT Strands today? Today's puzzle theme, “The Nose Knows,” requires some specialized knowledge to complete.
Below, we've compiled some helpful clues for Strands #173, along with the answers, should you make it this far. We'll start with a few clues, before moving on to the full answer for Strands #173, so keep reading if you need a little help.
Warning: spoilers for Strands #173.
Today's NYT Strands Answer — Today's Theme and Clues
The official theme of NYT Strands #173 is… “The nose knows.”
And here's an unofficial hint from me: “It smells good.”
If you are still in the dark, here are some helpful words to give you those valuable clues:
- MOODS
- VENAL
- DANISH
- MOLE
- CREED
- SLAVES
Still having trouble? The spangram will give you a clue to the connecting word. Today, it starts with “C” and ends with “S”.
Scroll down to find out what it is…
It's COMMONSCENTS.
Today's Strands Answers
So what are today's Strands answers for game #173?
Drum roll, please…
- MUSK
- LAVENDER
- SANDALWOOD
- CEDAR
- PINK
- LEMON
..and the spangram was COMMONSCENTS.
Strands #173
“The nose knows”
💡🔵🔵🔵
🟡🔵🔵🔵
Hello Strands fans. Another day, another topic I know nothing about. While it was pretty clear from the beginning that “The Nose Knows” would be about perfumes and fragrances, it’s not a field I consider myself an expert in, which made searching for terms like SANTAL a bit tricky.
It didn't help that the COMMONSCENTS spangram is A) a pun and B) a game that starts in the middle of the board. I did find the word “scents” pretty early on, but I didn't see how it could extend across the entire board.
This is all just a roundabout way of justifying how I ended up using a hint for my first turn, revealing the very useless MUSK in the bottom right corner.
As I racked my brain, I realized that LAVENDER was also a popular scent, and I found that word in the middle of the grid, spelled backwards. SANDALWOOD followed, going down the right side, and that opened up enough space for me to see the beginning of the spelling: COMMONSCENTS.
From there, it was just a matter of filling in the gaps. The anagram “EDACR” in the top left had to be CEDAR, which left two anagrams to find at the bottom. When I got ROSE, all I had to do was decode “MOELN” – which was either LEMON or “MELON.” Since the latter doesn’t smell much, I correctly chose the former for another tough win.
Strands' Answers from Yesterday
Reading this in a later time zone? You can find the full article on yesterday's Strands Answers for game #172 right here.