NYT Strands today — hints, answers and spangram for Sunday, April 28 (game #56)

I wouldn’t describe today’s NYT Strands puzzle as a particularly difficult one, but that doesn’t make it easy either; very few of them could be called that. But don’t worry! I have help for you below in the form of several hints to get you started. Check them out if you need them, scroll down to my commentary if not.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to know the answers.

NYT Strands today (game #56) – hint #1 – today’s theme

NYT Strands today (game #56) – hint #2 – clue words

NYT Strands today (game #56) – hint #3 – spangram

NYT Strands today (game #56) – hint #4 – spangram position

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Strands today (game #56) – the answers

The answers to today’s Strands, game #56, are…

• RAZOR
• WASHCLOTH
• SOAP
• SPONGE
• SHAMPOO
• CONDITIONER
• SPANGRAM: SHOWER

• My rating: Moderate
• My score: Perfect

This probably qualifies as a medium-difficulty Strands puzzle, because a couple of the words are quite long and therefore harder to find, and a couple of the shorter ones have uncommon letters of spelling. That can sometimes help, but not in this case – for me at least.

I got started easily enough, uncovering SHAMPOO and realizing that the theme clue – Coming clean – was going to mean finding personal cleaning items. I didn’t quite have the shower element yet, though, especially once I found RAZOR; I’m sure plenty of people shave in the shower, but I’m not one of them, so I didn’t yet make that connection. The trouble after that was simply that I couldn’t find more words. I spotted WASH, but it didn’t turn blue, and it took me ages to realize it continued into WASHCLOTH. SOAP was backwards, so to speak, so that took me a while too. And CONDITIONER foxed me right until I’d discovered everything else. Maybe it was just a bad day for me.

How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.

Yesterday’s NYT Strands answers (Saturday 27 April, game #55)

• QUEEN
• DOCTOR
• ADMIRAL
• REVEREND
• PROFESSOR
• SENATOR
• SPANGRAM: TITLES