Wednesday, December 17 (Out Of Line)

We’re past the halfway point in December. Christmas is just over a week away. The new year — 2026! — is just two weeks away. Get ready to start writing 2026 on everything, but probably forgetting a bunch and writing 2025 instead. We have some words to uncover, one way or another, so let’s solve today’s NYT Strands!

Looking for Tuesday’s Strands? Check out our guide right here.

How To Play Strands

Strands is the newest game in the New York Times’ stable of puzzle games. It’s a fun twist on classic word search games. Every day we’re given a new theme and then tasked with uncovering all the words on the grid that fit that theme, including a spangram that spans two sides of the board. One of these words is the spangram which crosses from one side of the grid to another and reveals even more about the day’s theme.

Spoilers ahead.

Today’s Strands Hints

Read on for today’s theme and some hints to help you uncover today’s words.

Today’s Theme: Out of line

Hint: These are all words that describe things that are off-kilter, unbalanced, at an angle and so forth.

Here are the first two letters of each word:

Remember, spoilers ahead!

What Are Today’s Strands Answers?

Today’s spangram is: A LITTLE OFF

Here’s the full list of words:

• ASKEW
• CROOKED
• LOPSIDED
• UNEVEN
• TILTED
• ASLANT

Here’s the completed Strands grid:

Today’s Strands Breakdown

I found LOPSIDED the moment I looked at the grid today, so I had a pretty good idea what this Strands’ theme was getting at. I found CROOKED next and then SLANT, and it drove me crazy that SLANT didn’t work. I thought it must be part of the spangram — until I tried ASLANT instead. Next came ASKEW and that made it very easy to find the actual spangram. I’d already scene OFF at the bottom so I just traced my way until I found the rest.

How did you do on your Strands today? Let me know on Twitter and Facebook.

Be sure to check out my blog for my daily Wordle guides as well as all my other writing about TV shows, streaming guides, movie reviews, video game coverage and much more. Thanks for stopping by!