Thursday, May 7, 2026

NYT Strands hints and answers for Friday, May 8 (game #796)

Looking for a different day?

A new NYT Strands puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Thursday's puzzle instead then click here: NYT Strands hints and answers for Thursday, May 7 (game #795).

Strands is the NYT's latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it's great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Strands today (game #796) - hint #1 - today's theme

What is the theme of today's NYT Strands?

Today's NYT Strands theme is… Garden variety

NYT Strands today (game #796) - hint #2 - clue words

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

  • SCRUB
  • RISE
  • TIDE
  • THEME
  • POEM
  • DROID

NYT Strands today (game #796) - hint #3 - spangram letters

How many letters are in today's spangram?

Spangram has 12 letters

NYT Strands today (game #796) - hint #4 - spangram position

What are two sides of the board that today's spangram touches?

First side: top, 2nd column

Last side: bottom, 4th column

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Strands today (game #796) - the answers

NYT Strands answers for game 796 on a blue background

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Strands, game #796, are…

  • BASIC
  • PROSAIC
  • COMMON
  • ORDINARY
  • PEDESTRIAN
  • SPANGRAM: RUNOFTHEMILL
  • My rating: Hard
  • My score: 1 hint

OK, I’ll be honest — I spent the first minute of this game looking for flowers and, not seeing any, took a hint from my non-game words.

BASIC triggered a head slap for not realizing the meaning of “garden variety” and the damning collection of synonyms for mundane.

From here on in, the game was pretty straightforward — indeed, you could almost say PEDESTRIAN.

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Thursday, May 7, game #795)

  • BLESS
  • APPROVE
  • ALLOW
  • LICENCE
  • PERMIT
  • SANCTION
  • SPANGRAM: GIVETHENOD

What is NYT Strands?

Strands is the NYT's not-so-new-any-more word game, following Wordle and Connections. It's now a fully fledged member of the NYT's games stable that has been running for a year and which can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

I've got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you're struggling to beat it each day.

U.S. military says it intercepted Iranian attacks on 3 Navy ships in Strait of Hormuz

Children play in the water along the shore as a mix of bulk carriers, cargo ships, and service vessels sit offshore in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, Sunday.

The U.S. military also says that it "targeted Iranian military facilities responsible for attacking U.S. forces." The exchange occurred Thursday as U.S. Navy destroyers transited the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Central Command said in a social media post.

(Image credit: Razieh Poudat/ISNA)

Wednesday, May 6, 2026

Vine is coming back, and it’s being relaunched by the guy who killed it — say hello to Jack Dorsey’s Divine, a TikTok and Instagram Stories rival with a ferocious ambition to end AI slop

  • Vine is being relaunched as a new app called Divine
  • It's being funded by Jack Dorsey, who acquired the original Vine platform in 2013
  • It's invite-only for the time being, but a wider rollout is on the way

Vine was the social media platform that defined the 2010s, and it’s making a comeback after a nearly 10-year absence. Well, kind of.

The platform that spearheaded short-form vertical feeds with its iconic six-second looping videos is being relaunched as Divine and funded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, AKA the same guy who acquired Vine in 2013, and later put it to sleep in 2017. But the funniest thing about the reboot is that Dorsey has beaten Elon Musk to the punch, who previously teased restoring user access to the 2010s social media staple.

While this sounds like a dream come true for those who lived through the Vine days, Divine is invite-only for now, but the company is planning a wider rollout in the coming months. The company has also noted that while Divine is inspired by the original Vine platform, it operates entirely independently and has no affiliation with Twitter/ X.

That said, a lot has changed since Vine was shut down. Social media algorithms are smarter, and consumer habits have shifted — so how will Divine live up to TikTok, Instagram, and other rival kingpins?

Divine’s aim is two-fold: the first being nostalgia, which I think will be the catalyst for luring users. Divine will play host to an archive of over 500,000 videos from Vine’s golden days, giving you a one-stop place to relive some of the most famous online videos you probably still reference with your friends today, as well as allowing you to create and upload new content.

As far as its algorithm goes, Divine is taking an alternative approach and will let users choose how content reaches them, offering four options: Home feed, Discovery, Trending, and Hashtag feed.

“We believe that the monoculture of a single advertising-oriented algorithm is responsible for many of the issues experienced by other social media,” Divine details in its FAQs page.

A smartphone showing a tab in the Divine app

(Image credit: Divine / iOS App Store )

The second part of Divine’s goal is to take a stance against AI-generated content, which involves combining a plethora of methods to create a robust AI detection tool.

ProofMode, the main component of this, is a tool that inspects metadata to detect AI that's used to generate audio, images, and videos. On top of this, Divine has a user reporting system in place in addition to machine-learning detection and human-in-the-loop (HITL) techniques.

Despite having to wait for the broader rollout, there’s no denying that Vine’s relaunch will excite an entire generation of internet nerds who got their first online video kick from Vine. Unlike the old musical.ly platform, which was then merged with TikTok, this is a different scenario.

It’s a full-on resuscitation of an app that, despite having a significant influence on the evolution of short-form videos, was quite short-lived, and you can best believe you’ll be getting a full review when I finally get my hands on it.

Tuesday, May 5, 2026

NYT Strands hints and answers for Wednesday, May 6 (game #794)

Looking for a different day?

A new NYT Strands puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Tuesday's puzzle instead then click here: NYT Strands hints and answers for Tuesday, May 5 (game #793).

Strands is the NYT's latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it's great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Strands today (game #794) - hint #1 - today's theme

What is the theme of today's NYT Strands?

Today's NYT Strands theme is… Get-up-and-go!

NYT Strands today (game #794) - hint #2 - clue words

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

  • DAME
  • MAIN
  • SAILS
  • CLAIM
  • PAIL
  • RISK

NYT Strands today (game #794) - hint #3 - spangram letters

How many letters are in today's spangram?

Spangram has 12 letters

NYT Strands today (game #794) - hint #4 - spangram position

What are two sides of the board that today's spangram touches?

First side: left, 6th row

Last side: right, 1st row

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Strands today (game #794) - the answers

NYT Strands answers for game 794 on a blue background

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Strands, game #794, are…

  • SOAR
  • CLIMB
  • ASCEND
  • SPARKLE
  • SHIMMER
  • RADIATE
  • SPANGRAM: RISEANDSHINE
  • My rating: Easy
  • My score: Perfect

Yesterday we had DIGITALCLOCK and today we have RISEANDSHINE. Is someone at NYT receiving subliminal messages about their tardiness via the medium of Strands, I wonder? Or maybe it’s just a coincidence…

Either way, this was a great game to get the brain working at the start of the day with a few tricky spots among the more obvious ones like SOAR in the board's key position of the top left-hand corner.

Meanwhile, please tell me I wasn’t the only one to miss that the diagonal spangram divided the game into two sets of words — rising on one side and shining on the other. 

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Tuesday, May 5, game #793)

  • ALARM
  • SNOOZE
  • TIME
  • RADIO
  • DATE
  • DISPLAY
  • TUNER
  • SPANGRAM: DIGITALCLOCK

What is NYT Strands?

Strands is the NYT's not-so-new-any-more word game, following Wordle and Connections. It's now a fully fledged member of the NYT's games stable that has been running for a year and which can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

I've got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you're struggling to beat it each day.