Can I help you a little today? Today's puzzle — "beat the heat" - is a misleading touch to my eyes, but the words themselves are not difficult to find if you have a link.

Below we've compiled some useful tips for Strand#97 and the answer to that. We'll start with a few clues before building the full answer for Strand #97, so read on if you need a bit of help.

Warning: Spoilers are ahead for Strand #97.  

The official theme of NYT Strand #97 is:.. "Beat the heat".

And here's an unofficial tip from me: "'tis season.

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

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

Scroll down to find out what it is...

It's summer.

So what is Strand's answer today for game #97

Drumroll, please...

...And the spangram was summer.

Chain #97

"Measures against heat"

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hi chain. As I wrote in the intro, I quickly assumed that it was something related to relaxation temperatures, so the clue - "beat the heat" - found a bit misleading.I was all set up to find things like "air conditioners", "fans", "icecubes" and so on.

Fortunately, the first word I found straddles both my guess on the theme and what it actually was. The popsicle was neatly spelled in the lower left corner, just waiting for me to grab it.

While I was looking for "suncream" I suddenly realized that summer had crossed the board, so connected it and had my spangram. Now I knew I was just looking for something related to the season, everything became much easier.

Carnival with Lemonade completed the lower half (I think I would have had if the latter were not literally spelled across the board with other words I had in place) so I was free to move to the upper half. 

The beach was spelled from left to right just above the spangram so it was easy to predict and easy to find. 

The last 2 were a bit tricky. THE CAMP ISN'T REALLY ANYTHING RELATED TO THE BRITISH SUMMER, BUT IN ITS PLACE, I READ THIS IN THE TIME ZONE AFTER

THAT I COULD EASILY WORK BACKWARDS AND SPELL HOPSCOTCH WITH THE REST OF THE LETTERS FOR EASY VICTORY? You can find the full article of yesterday's Strand answer for game #96 right here.