Can I help you a little today? Today's puzzle — "Looking for a mate" - is painfully ambiguous, even if you know what it is getting.

Below we've compiled some useful tips for Strand#75 and the answer to that. We'll start with a few clues before building the full answer for Strand #75, so read on if you need a bit of help.

Warning: Spoilers are ahead for Strand #75.  

The official theme of NYT Strand #75 is... "Looking for a mate"

And here are some unofficial tips from me: "Better with two people"

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

Still struggling? Spangram will give you tips about connecting words. Today, it starts with 'P' and ends with 'D'.

Scroll down to find out what it is...

Paired.

So what is Strand's answer today for game #75?

Drum roll, please...

...And the spangrams were paired.

💡🔵💡🔵

🟡🔵🔵🔵

🔵🔵

hi chain. This is horrible, even after you decode the theme. 

As you can see, I quickly ended up using two clues, and yet it gave me to cotton on what wings and t had in common

When I found out this was not dating (Wingman?I am grateful that the words finally revealed have in common that you need 2 of them to work.

So, I came up with spangram: paired. 

It wasn't plain sailing yet, but I looked at BOOKEND next (already tried 'book' to win 1 of those clues). It left only earplugs to finish the lower half of the board.

There were still three words hidden in the upper half, but fortunately I found the longest one (chopsticks) first. It made finding mittens easy enough - I don't think I got the pliers any other way.

Not a fun puzzle today, in my view - a little too vague for fun. Hopefully tomorrow we will put that right.

Are you reading this in a later time zone? You can find the full article of yesterday's Strand answer for game #74 right here.