Need help with today's NYT Strand puzzle? Today's puzzle theme, "It's not just black and white", is a difficult problem to solve even if you know what it means.

Below we have compiled a list of helpful hints and answers for Strands #126. We'll start with a few hints, and then we'll give you the complete answer to Strands #126.

WARNING: There are spoilers for Strands #126.

The official theme of NYT Strands #126 is... "It's Not Just Black and White."

And here's an unofficial hint from me: "50 shades of..."

If you'd like to know more, please contact me.

If you're still in the dark, here are some useful words that give you valuable hint tokens:

Still having trouble? Spangram gives you a hint on conjunctions. Today it starts with "G" and ends with "E."

Scroll down to see what it is.

GRAYSCALE.

Now, what's the answer to today's strand?

Drumroll, please.

... And Spangram is GRAYSCALE

Strands #126

"Not just black and white"

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Hello, Strands fans! This is odd, as things should be fairly obvious on the "not just black and white" theme.

Also, as a technical writer, it should have been easy for me, since the answer is exactly the kind of language that companies use to describe the various shades of silver and gray that their products are shipped in. And yet, I could not get to this link for some time.

Eventually I found both SLATE and CHARCOAL in the lower right. Then I found FLINT in the upper half and STEEL to the right of it.

This gave me enough information to understand the spangram. This was not about geology, but about shades of gray! I spelled GRAYSCALE backwards from right to left.

This resulted in a straight line spelling PLATINUM in the lower right corner, leaving only one thing to find about PLATINUM in the upper right corner I connected the GRAPHITE to complete the puzzle.

Are you reading this late in the day? Here is the full article on Strand's solution to yesterday's game #125.