How the New York Times Made Its Newest Word Search Game, Strands

Attention all Connections fiends, Wordle lovers and Spelling Bee solvers: Strands is a new game that the New York Times Games team is beta-testing. It will be free for everyone to play on the web beginning March 4.

This new puzzle is a word search with a unique twist. When solvers open the game, they will see a 6-by-8 grid of words. Solvers can track the number of words they have found at the bottom-right corner of the board as they play.

Tracy Bennett, the Wordle editor, who also edits Strands, said the game will appeal to people who enjoy anagrams or games like Boggle and Scrabble. Everdeen Mason, the editorial director of Games, said it can even serve as a steppingstone for players seeking to understand the tricks of the Crossword.

How to Play

• The objective is to find words that all have something in common, and a spangram that describes what they have in common.

• The spangram must touch two opposite sides of the game board.

• Today’s Theme is a clue on the board meant to guide gameplay.

• Finding three words that are not part of the theme will unlock the “Hint” button and highlight the letters that make up a theme word.

• Players can connect letters vertically, horizontally and diagonally, and can switch directions in the middle of a word.

• Words fit the grid perfectly, with no letter used more than once.

Why a Word Search?

Zoe Bell, the executive producer of Games, said that word searches have a long history in newspapers. In 1968, Norman E. Gibat published word searches in the “Selenby Digest,” a flyer he distributed in Oklahoma supermarkets. Around the same time, Pedro Ocón de Oro, a Spanish puzzle maker, was creating word searches he called “sopas de letras,” or “soups of letters.” In the 1970s and 1980s, word searches started to appear more in newspapers and activity books.

Juliette Seive, a research director on the New York Times Games team, came up with the original pitch for Strands.

“I was talking to my partner about it, and he said, ‘I had this super fun word search game that I loved playing with my grandma, and I feel like there are no fun word searches now,’” she said.

Ms. Seive was inspired by the success of Wordle, a game Josh Wardle, a software engineer, created as a gift for his partner, a word game lover.

“I thought, ‘Great. I’ll pitch something that I think would make my partner happy,’” she said.

Ms. Seive’s research found that New York Times Games players also solve word searches, according to Heidi Erwin, a puzzle designer on the team. “But they aren’t super happy with the level of challenge,” Ms. Erwin said.

“What I saw in looking at the competition is that there aren’t as many word searches with a twist,” Ms. Seive said. “How do we make it feel fun for adults, beyond finding words?”

Strands is also a game that solvers can come back to after their first attempt. “It’s a slightly deeper, longer game than our other ones,” Ms. Bell said.

What Makes Strands a Times Game?

The team’s goal is to produce puzzles that are “thoughtfully made, thoughtfully played,” Jonathan Knight, the general manager and leader of the Games team, said.

What makes Strands a New York Times game is its human touch. The editors are known for crafting clever wordplay, testing solvers’ knowledge and coming up with lively themes. All of the puzzle editors and some other Games team members contribute their own word lists. Players may eventually recognize their individual personalities in the game, Ms. Erwin speculated with a smile.

Ms. Bennett loved word searches as a child, and later became an avid Boggle player, so she was excited to edit this new game. She said that her experience constructing and editing crosswords comes in handy with Strands.

“The spangram should sum things up in some way,” she said. “It’s almost like a revealer in a crossword, where it shows you what is connecting all of these words.”

Some themes are fill-in-the-blank phrases. They may also be steps in a process, items that all belong to the same category, synonyms or homophones. Just as she varies the difficulty of Wordle puzzles within a week, Ms. Bennett plans to throw Strands solvers curveballs every once in a while.

Since puzzle editors have to work within the rules of the game, all the words have to fit into the 6-by-8 grid without overlap. Another constraint is that the theme words cannot be proper names, Christina Iverson, a puzzle editor, explained. (The spangram, though, can be a proper name.)

Ms. Iverson enjoyed thinking of entries that had a pop-culture theme. For example, “room” and “twilight” are words, but they are also recognizable as book titles.

The Process

The team hosts an annual event called Game Jam, where staff members gather to explore ideas for new games. The pitching process is open to everyone, something that differentiates the New York Times Games team from other studios.

Ms. Seive brought the idea to a group of people at Game Jam, and Ms. Bennett offered to help…