NYT Strands today — hints, spangram and answers for game #434 (Sunday, May 11 2025)

Strands today: Quick menu

Need some assistance with NYT Strands today? Today’s theme — “Happy…” — isn’t too tough, if you check the date (and are in the U.S.).

Below, we’ve compiled some useful hints for Strands #434, 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 #434, so read on if you need a little help.

Warning: Spoilers lie ahead for Strands #434.

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

The official theme for NYT Strands #434 is… “Happy…”

And here’s an unofficial hint from me: “What day is it today?”

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

RAIN
SANDY
STAY
WARDS
CANDY
LEFT
WOLF

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

Scroll down to find out what it is…

It’s MOTHERSDAY.

Today’s Strands answers

So, what are today’s Strands answers for game #434?

Drumroll, please…

BREAKFAST
PARTY
HUGS
CARDS
FLOWERS
DRAWINGS

Strands #434

(Image credit: Alan Martin)

…and the spangram was MOTHERSDAY

Strands #434

“Happy …”

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Hi Strands fans. I was an a disadvantage today, as in the U.K, we celebrate Mother’s Day in a revolving date around Easter.

So when I saw “Happy…” it didn’t immediately follow that this was about Mother’s Day. In fact, I thought it was about birthdays, which actually got me reasonably far on its own, as I was able to get BREAKFAST in the top-right corner and PARTY below it.

Then I spotted “mother” to its left, and it clicked. I connected MOTHERSDAY from top to bottom, dividing the grid in two, and added HUGS in the bottom-right corner to complete one side of the board.

Three words were left to find on the opposite side, and I was able to isolate the last two by getting the middle one of CARDS. That just left FLOWERS above and DRAWINGS below it to complete the puzzle.