If you’re playing today’s version of The New York Times Strands puzzle (#667, December 30, 2025), you can look forward to having fun with today’s music puzzle, where you get to find the songs that ruled the year. Strands puzzles combine a word search with an exploration, and today, it all comes together in one great spangram.
Today’s Theme: 2025 Top Twenty Music
As opposed to some days where themes may be abstract or pertain to broad concepts, for December 30, themes revolve around popular songs of 2025, which reached the top of charts, went viral, and were incorporated into the soundtrack of that year. As such, this specific puzzle tends to be nostalgic for those who engaged with music trends during the previous 12 months.
The Spangram: The Key to Solving It
The key to understanding Strands lies in the spangram, which is always a “bridge word” that utilizes each letter in the puzzle. Here is today’s spangram:
→ HITSONGS
This is quite a long word that is theme-related and is what the entire puzzle revolves around in order to give you some clues on how to find the words inside the grid.
Hints to Get Started
Here are a couple of tips that will help you solve this puzzle without immediately revealing the answers:
• Centricities Song Titles: The early guesses that resemble familiar 2025 song titles can open clue tokens and reveal pieces of the puzzle.
• Spangram Clues – You will find HITSONGS after identifying their presence and parts of them. The theme-related word will automatically connect.
• Search for Patterns: Words which are related to music, for instance, musicians, parts of songs like chorus, bridge, as well as genres, are bound to be hidden inside the puzzle.
“All of these pointers ought to give you a useful nudge in the right direction for how to solve today’s problem for Strands.”
✔️ Why Strands Is Worth Playing
“Strands” can be termed as a very popular puzzle that offers a combination of the classics such as word search, pattern prediction, vocabulary challenges, and a pinch of lateral thinking. The completion of the “spangram” and “theme word” also requires an added level of memory because one has to remember some popular songs that were representative of a given year. The musical theme puzzle of the day gives it an extra kick.
Well, carry on solving and enjoying the task of connecting the hits of 2015 with the Strands puzzle today!