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Tom’s Guide
Tom’s Guide
Technology
Alan Martin

NYT Strands today — hints, spangram and answers for game #405 (Saturday, April 12 2025)

NYT Strands on a cellphone.
Strands today: Quick menu

Need some assistance with NYT Strands today? Today's theme — "Get your mind out of the gutter" — is a little confusing, even with a few answers on the board.

Below, we've compiled some useful hints for Strands #405, 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 #405, so read on if you need a little help.

Warning: Spoilers lie ahead for Strands #405.

Today's NYT Strands answer — Today's theme and hints

The official theme for NYT Strands #405 is... "Get your mind out of the gutter".

And here's an unofficial hint from me: "In need of a clean".

If you're still in the dark, here are some useful words to give you those valuable clue tokens:

  • STADIUM
  • SODAS
  • DINED
  • WILDS
  • SWORDS
  • TIDY
  • DULL

Still struggling? The spangram will give you a hint about the connection word. Today, it starts with D and ends with S.

Scroll down to find out what it is...

It's DIRTYWORDS.

Today's Strands answers

So, what are today's Strands answers for game #405?

Drumroll, please...

  • GRIMY
  • MUDDY
  • POLLUTED
  • STAINED
  • FILTHY
  • UNKEMPT
(Image credit: Alan Martin)

...and the spangram was DIRTYWORDS.

Strands #405

“Get your mind out of the gutter”

💡🔵🔵🔵

🔵🟡🔵🔵

Hi Strands fans. A quality pun from the NYT puzzle setters today. With hindsight, "Get your mind out of the gutter" could only be about DIRTYWORDS - or rather, words referring to things that are unclean.

I didn't cotton onto that right away, so needed a clue to get started. That revealed GRIMY along the left-hand side, which put me on the right track. I followed this up with MUDDY spelt backwards from the middle of the grid to the top, and POLLUTED in the bottom-right corner.

STAINED was in the top-right corner, and when I found "words" in the top half of the grid, the spangram finally clicked. I wrote out DIRTYWORDS backwards from the bottom of the board to the top.

Two answers were still at large. FILTHY was in the top-left corner, and that just left UNKEPT in the bottom left 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 #404 right here.

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