Strands,
connect the theme.

Strands is a themed word-search puzzle inspired by the New York Times daily game. A 6×8 grid of letters hides a set of words that all relate to one theme — and one of them, the spangram, stretches across opposite edges of the board. Find every theme word to clear the puzzle.

Drag across adjacent letters to spell a word. Adjacency is 8-directional — diagonals count. Release to submit. Theme words tint sage; the spangram tints moss; non-theme dictionary finds give you hints toward locked theme words.

The spangram is one of the theme words and the longest "story" in the grid. It always touches two opposite edges of the board (top and bottom, or left and right). When you find it, the cells tint a deeper moss colour to mark it.

Every valid dictionary word you find that isn't a theme word fills a hint. After three bonus finds, pressing Hint highlights one of the remaining theme words on the board — you still have to trace it yourself.

No. Each cell can be used once per word. A word can revisit the grid as a different word, but inside a single submission a cell can only be in your path once.

A small hand-curated pool at launch — gardens, night sky, citrus, weather, motion, music. The algorithmic packer at module load lays the words onto fresh 6×8 grids each game, so the same theme reads differently each time you play it.

Yes. Touch and drag the same way as mouse drag; release a finger to submit. Cells are sized for thumbs even at 8 rows on a phone screen.

The same ~9.4k-word common-English list shared with Letter Boxed (top 10k words from google-10000-english, filtered to 3–12 letters). Pluralisations and short common words are accepted; proper nouns are not.