Need help with today's NYT Strand puzzle? Today's puzzle theme, “And the Oscars” is not a cipher, but you may stumble upon it without the necessary knowledge

Below we have compiled some helpful hints and answers for Strands #138 We will start with the hints and then lead you to the full solution for Strands #138

WARNING: There are spoilers for Strands #138

The official theme for NYT Strands #138 is “The Oscars” Is

And here's an unofficial hint from me: “Heroes of the Silver Screen”

If you're still not sure, here's a handy word that gives you a valuable hint token:

Still having trouble? Spangram gives you a hint on conjunctions Today it starts with 'B' and ends with 'G'

Scroll down to see what it is

BESTACTING

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

Drumroll, please

Spangram was BESTACTING

Strands #138

“And the Oscar goes to ”

?

??

Hello Strands fans! If you are a movie buff, this puzzle should be a piece of cake Unfortunately, I am not a movie buff

Thankfully, the theme was so obvious that I was able to instantly split the board in two I connected the letters “B,” “E,” “S,” and “T” across the middle of the board followed by the spangram “BESTACTING” to divide the grid in two

This made everything much easier, and all that was left was to connect the words of the actors I had heard of; BERRY went first near the upper right corner, followed by SWANK just above it This left only FIELD in the upper half

The second segment was more difficult, but putting BRIDGES in the lower right first certainly helped, as it revealed that one of the endings was “nix” It did not take a genius to work backwards from there and spell it PHOENIX

That left two Interestingly, on an episode of the quiz show “Pointless” that I watched yesterday, someone correctly identified an Oscar winner named Helen in “Helen Hunt,” so I was primed to spot the HUNT on the left

This left only one word: I connected the STONE and completed the puzzle surprisingly quickly given my limited knowledge

Are you reading this late in the day? The full text of Strand's solution to yesterday's game #137 can be found here