NYT Strands today — hints, spangram and answers for game #439 (Friday, May 16 2025)
Strands today: Quick menu
Need some assistance with NYT Strands today? Today’s theme — “To a degree” — isn’t too cryptic, but may still require some lateral thinking to get started.
Below, we’ve compiled some useful hints for Strands #439, as well as the answers, should it come to that. We’ll start off with some clues, before building up to the full answer for Strands #439, so read on if you need a little help.
Warning: Spoilers lie ahead for Strands #439.
Today’s NYT Strands answer — Today’s theme and hints
The official theme for NYT Strands #439 is… “To a degree”.
And here’s an unofficial hint from me: “Education celebration”.
If you’re still in the dark, here are some useful words to give you those valuable clue tokens:
- PRESS
- PLOT
- DICE
- SINS
- RACES
- SWAT
Still struggling? The spangram will give you a hint about the connection word. Today, it starts with G and ends with N.
Scroll down to find out what it is…
It’s GRADUATION.
Today’s Strands answers
So, what are today’s Strands answers for game #439?
Drumroll, please…
- DIPLOMA
- GOWN
- PHOTO
- SPEECH
- TASSEL
- PROCESSION
…and the spangram was GRADUATION.
Strands #439
“To a degree”
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Hi Stands fans. Today’s theme – “To a degree” – is clearly about education, but I wasn’t exactly sure how right away.
I found DIPLOMA pretty quickly in the top-left corner, but then spent my time looking for other education awards like “doctorate”.
Eventually, I found GOWN in the bottom-right corner and realized this was about GRADUATION – the spangram written from the bottom-left corner to the top right.
In the U.K, where I graduated longer ago than I like to think about, we don’t go in for big graduation day ceremonies, so I was at a bit of a loss. Thankfully, the spangram had cordoned off a couple of easy answers: PHOTO on the left-hand side and SPEECH at the top of the board.
But after those two were found, I still needed to use a clue to seperate my final two answers, which were fused together in the bottom-right segment. The clue revealed TASSEL, and that just left me to decode the remaining letters into PROCESSION to complete the puzzle.
Yesterday’s Strands answers
Reading this in a later time zone? You can find the full article on yesterday’s Strands answers for game #438 right here.
