NYT Strands today — hints, spangram and answers for game #306 (Friday, January 3 2025)

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Need some assistance with NYT Strands today? Today’s theme — “On auto” — isn’t too hard to decode, but there are a fair few answers to find.

Below, we’ve compiled some useful hints for Strands #306, as well as the answers, should it come to that. We’ll start off with some clues, before building up to the full answer for Strands #306, so read on if you need a little help.

Warning: Spoilers lie ahead for Strands #306.

Today’s NYT Strands answer — Today’s theme and hints

The official theme for NYT Strands #306 is… “On auto”.

And here’s an unofficial hint from me: “Mechanic’s inventory.”

If you’re still in the dark, here are some useful words to give you those valuable clue tokens:

POODLE
RULER
DIET
MINK
MULE
ROOM
WIDER
DRIER

Still struggling? The spangram will give you a hint about the connection word. Today, it starts with C and ends with Y.

Scroll down to find out what it is…

It’s CARBODY.

Today’s Strands answers

So, what are today’s Strands answers for game #306?

Drumroll, please…

DOOR
HOOD
TRUNK
WINDSHIELD
MIRROR
GRILLE
BUMPER

Strands #306

(Image credit: Alan Martin)

…and the spangram was CARBODY.

Strands #306

“On auto”

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Hi Strands fans. Today’s puzzle will have you listing the various parts of a car – except, inexplicably, the wheels.

But I didn’t cotton onto that right away, and needed a clue to get started. Said clue revealed DOOR, so I realized this was about the parts of every car, rather than automotive brands (just as well, as I know precious little about vehicles.)

I found HOOD to its right, and then TRUNK in the lower half. WINDSHIELD took out a lot of letters in the bottom-left corner, and cleared enough space for me to uncover the spangram. CARBODY was spelt backwards from right to left along the middle of the grid.

Two answers were left to find. I spotted GRILLE spelt backwards between HOOD and the spangram, and that just left BUMPER in the top-left corner to finish the puzzle.