Need help with today's NYT strand? Today's theme, “Cool color!” - Today's theme is “Cool color!

Below we have compiled some helpful hints and what-if answers for Strands #233. We'll start with a few hints and then work our way to the full answer to #233.

WARNING: There are spoilers for Strands #233.

The official theme for NYT Strands #233 is... “Cool Colors!”

And here's an unofficial tip from me: “Make a shade.”

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

Still struggling? Spangram gives you a hint on conjunctive words. Today it starts with a “T” and ends with an “S.”

Scroll down to see what it is.

THEBLUES.

Now, what is the answer to game #233 on the Strand today?

Drumroll please.

... Spangram was THEBLUES.

Strand #233

“Cool colors!”

🔵

🔵🔵

Hello, Strand fans! If I hadn't immediately spotted COBALT in the upper left corner, I might have been pondering this one for a while. With AZURE to the right of it, I immediately knew that today's puzzle was about shades of blue.

Nevertheless, it took me a while to figure out how to connect the word “blues” to spangram, so I tried to isolate more answers on the board: INDIGO was in the lower left corner and TURQUOISE was on the other side of it.

When I got the NAVY in the middle, I finally managed to write down enough letters to figure out that the word before “blues” was simply “the”. This is THEBLUES.

There was only one word left, and thankfully it was in a straight line. The final answer: periwinkle.

Are you reading this in a slower time zone? The full article on Strand's solution to yesterday's Round 232 can be found here.