If you are here for the NYT Strands answers today, you have picked a puzzle with a personality. Sunday’s grid trades in a very specific kind of energy, the loud, chest-puffed-out, look-at-me energy of someone who cannot stop mentioning their own achievements at a dinner party. The theme is “Putting on airs,” and once that phrase clicks, the rest of the board practically solves itself.
Strands, for anyone new to the New York Times’ quieter cousin of Wordle and Connections, asks players to find themed words hidden in a letter grid, connecting tiles in any direction without reusing a single letter. One word, the spangram, always stretches from one edge of the board to the opposite edge, and cracking that one first usually unlocks everything else.
In This Article
What Today’s Theme Is Really About
“Putting on airs” is one of those phrases that sounds old-fashioned until you realize it describes half of everyone’s social media feed. It means acting fancier, richer or more important than you actually are, and today’s word list leans into every flavor of that behavior, from the loud and obnoxious to the quietly smug.
Hints For The September 20 Strands Puzzle
Before the answers arrive, a few nudges for anyone who wants to earn the solve honestly.
For the spangram, think ten letters and one seriously inflated ego. It is the formal, slightly clinical word psychologists use for an exaggerated sense of self-importance, the kind that shows up in everything from job interviews to group chats.
For the theme words, nearly every answer is a verb someone uses when they want the whole room to notice them. Picture a peacock, a rooster or that one coworker who mentions their promotion in every meeting for a month.
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Today’s NYT Strands Answers
Here is the full solve for today’s puzzle, NYT Strands game 931.
- GLOAT
- BRAG
- STRUT
- BLUSTER
- POSTURE
- FLEX
- BOAST
- Spangram: GRANDIOSITY
Eight words in total, and none of them are particularly obscure, so once the theme lands, most players should clear the board quickly. The trickier part tends to be resisting the urge to guess random synonyms for “confident” before the actual pattern reveals itself.
A Little Extra Context
There is something almost fitting about a puzzle themed around showing off landing in the same week that “flex culture” keeps trending across every platform from LinkedIn to Instagram. Grandiosity, in clinical terms, describes an inflated sense of one’s own importance or abilities, and it has quietly become one of the most-discussed personality traits of the algorithm era, where a humblebrag can rack up more engagement than an honest update ever could. Strands did not invent that observation, but building a whole grid around it is a neat bit of cultural timekeeping for a game that turns three later this year.
For context, yesterday’s Strands puzzle went in almost the opposite direction with a pirate-themed grid, proof that the puzzle’s writers enjoy whiplash as much as wordplay. If you missed it, our guide to yesterday’s NYT Strands pirate puzzle is still up.
How To Play NYT Strands
New to the game? The rules are simple. Connect letters horizontally, vertically or diagonally to spell out themed words, using each tile only once. Find enough non-theme words and the game unlocks a free hint. Find the spangram, highlighted in yellow once solved, and the rest of the puzzle tends to open up fast.
Keeping a streak alive across multiple NYT puzzles has become its own small daily ritual for a lot of players, and today’s other word games are just as live. Today’s Wordle answer is already up if that is next on your list, and yesterday’s NYT Connections breakdown is there too for anyone catching up. Gamers chasing something less wordy can also grab today’s live Free Fire MAX redeem codes while they are here.
