TechRadar Publishes Quordle, NYT Connections and Strands Answers for October 16

For Quordle #1726, TechRadar said the puzzle had three different standard vowels, no repeated letters, and one of the letters Q, Z, X or J. Two answers began with the same letter, and the starting letters were S, W, J and S. The four answers were SHORT, WORTH, JOIST and SLUNK. The Daily Sequence answers for game #1726 were DOWD, ADOPT, MOSSY and DANDY. The guide noted that the rare letter J appeared and that the game was also notable for the absence of As and Es. The writer said he came close to a perfect four-in-a-row run of correct guesses but faltered on the final word, choosing “slung” ahead of SLUNK.

For NYT Connections #1223, the 16 words were HUNGARY, HUNGRY, HIPPO, CHICKEN, CHIP, CHAD, COOLIDGE, CYRUS, SPAN, MARK, LAOS, NICK, PARAGUAY, SMARTIES, BULGARI and SCRATCH. The yellow group was surface imperfections, made up of CHIP, MARK, NICK and SCRATCH. The green group was landlocked countries, with CHAD, HUNGARY, LAOS and PARAGUAY. The blue group was European countries minus a letter, with BULGARI, CYRUS, HUNGRY and SPAN. The purple group was starting with words for “stylish,” with CHICKEN, COOLIDGE, HIPPO and SMARTIES. TechRadar rated the puzzle Easy and reported a Perfect score. The guide said having HUNGRY and HIPPO beside each other, as well as HUNGRY next to HUNGARY, was very distracting. It also listed Thursday’s answers: ways to preserve food, things you can score in sports, lowest part, and low landforms with a letter changed.

For NYT Strands #957, the theme was “Just a little bit.” The clue words were PILL, STATE, LAME, SALT, LOCAL and WORM. The spangram had 10 letters and touched the left and right sides of the board on the fifth row. The answers were PINPOINT, MOLECULE, ATOM, MITE, FOLLICLE and AMOEBA, with SMALLWORLD as the spangram. TechRadar rated the puzzle Easy and reported a Perfect score. The writer said that spotting PINPOINT and SMALLWORLD early led him to expect MINIATURE on the board, but the remaining words were scientific leaning, with only the spelling of AMOEBA causing pause. The previous day’s Strands answers were BEACON, STAIRCASE, DOME, LANTERN and GALLERY, with LIGHTHOUSE as the spangram.

TechRadar also noted that Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and remains active after more than 1,500 games. Connections and Strands are part of the New York Times games lineup; Connections challenges players to group four items that share something in common, with green, yellow, blue and purple categories representing different difficulty levels, while Strands is played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.