Lifehacker published hints and answers for Strands on Tuesday, April 21, 2026, giving puzzle players the solution to a board built around the theme “Risky business.” The day’s words were ADVENTUROUS, GUTSY, COURAGEOUS, BOLD and INTREPID.
Tim Mulkerin opened with a simple promise to readers looking for help with Strands, saying he would share clues, tips and finally the answer for the April 21 puzzle. He described the theme in two ways: “Those who get a thrill by putting their lives on the line” and “Personality qualities of those who take risks.”
The answer set mattered because Strands has become one of the daily stops for New York Times puzzle readers, available on website and in the NYT Games app. Mulkerin also reminded players how the game works: words can move up, down, left, right and diagonally, each letter can be used only once, and there is only one correct solution. The spangram, he noted, is the word that more explicitly states the puzzle’s theme and stretches across the board from left to right or top to bottom.
That structure framed the day’s solve. BOLD sat in the lower right corner of the board, while ADVENTUROUS occupied the upper left, anchoring the risk-taking vocabulary that defined the puzzle. The rest of the answers followed the same pattern, each word pointing back to the idea of daring under pressure rather than to a broader category of business or finance.
For readers who arrived looking for one game and found a small lesson in how Strands works, the takeaway was straightforward: the theme was not a trick. It was a line from the board to the clue set, and the answer list made it plain. After Tuesday’s puzzle, the next stop for many players will be the site’s other daily help pages, including hints for Wordle and Connections.
