NEW Strands Today — Hints, Spangrams and Answers for Game #242 (Thursday, October 31, 2024)

On November 1, 2024By Littum

Strands today: Quick menu

Need a little help with NYT Strands today? Today’s theme – “Trick or treat!” — is clearly seasonal, but may not be as obvious as it seems.

Below we have collected some useful tips for Strands #242, as well as the answers should it come to that. We’ll start with some clues before building up to the full answer for Strands #242, so read on if you need some help.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Strands #242.

Today’s NYT Strand’s answer — Today’s theme and hints

The official theme for NYT Strands #242 is… “Trick or treat!”

And here’s an unofficial tip from me: “What do you go as?”

If you’re still in the dark, here are some helpful words to give you those valuable clues:

DECK
CENSUS
MEOW
PEST
PRESS
POSIT
MOLE
PLOW

Still struggling? The spangram will give you a hint about the connecting word. Today it starts with ‘C’ and ends with ‘E’.

Scroll down to find out what it is…

It’s COSTUME.

Dagens Strand’s answer

So what is today’s Strands response to game #242?

Drumroll, please…

MUMMY
WITCH
PUMPKIN
GHOST
PIRATE
CLOWN
PRINCESS

Thread #242

(Image credit: Alan Martin)

…and the spanframe was COSTUME.

Thread #242

“Trick or treat!”

Hello Strand’s fans. A pretty nice companion puzzle to yesterday’s. It was all about candy, while today’s Strands are of course about Halloween. But don’t waste time looking for the word itself, as I did: it isn’t there. In fact, it would take me a while to get the spanframe itself.

After failing to watch “Halloween”, I began searching for various monsters, cryptids and things that go bump in the night. I found the MUMMY first, along the bottom, and the WITCH to the right. PUMPKIN was immediately over it and I was sure GHOST would be in there somewhere. Sure enough, I found it in the top half near the center of the grid.

I couldn’t see any more monsters – as it turns out there were none to be found. But when I saw PIRATE in the top left, it clicked: this was about party costumes, not the festival itself!

And there it was: the spanframe. I connected the COSTUME from left to right across the center of the board.

Only two answers remained to be found, and it’s safe to say I wouldn’t have found them without this revelation. KLOWN was left in the bottom half, leaving me to connect PRINCESS near the top to put another puzzle to bed.

Yesterday’s Strand’s answer

Are you reading this in a later time zone? You can find the entire article about yesterday’s Strand’s answer for game #241 right here.