NYT Strands today — hints, answers and spangram for Friday, April 26 (game #54)

It's time to tackle another of the NYT's Strands puzzles. The aim here is to uncover a series of words hidden within a grid of letters and united by a single theme.

It's easy to pick up, often difficult to solve and a great addition to your daily routine if you already play the likes of Wordle and Connections. So read on for a few helpful hints and my commentary on today's Strands puzzle.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Strands today (game #54) - hint #1 - today's theme

NYT Strands today (game #54) - hint #2 - clue words

NYT Strands today (game #54) - hint #3 - spangram

NYT Strands today (game #54) - hint #4 - spangram position

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Strands today (game #54) - the answers

The answers to today's Strands, game #54, are…

• SHARP
• NATURAL
• CLEF
• FLAT
• SIGNATURE
• REST
• MEASURE
• SPANGRAM: NOTATION

• My rating: Very hard
• My score: Perfect

You might look at my verdict above and think there's an inconsistency; why am I describing it as 'very hard' when I got a perfect score? Well, you wouldn't wonder why if you'd seen me struggling to solve this one over a period of about an hour!

In my defence, the game was biased against me from the start. I've never learned a musical instrument, other than a few weeks playing recorder at school aged about six, until it was politely suggested to me that I might want to try something different such as standing in a corner watching everyone else. I am not musical.

To add to that, today's theme hint, 'Staff members', meant nothing to me. In the UK, we use the term 'stave' rather than 'staff', so Staff members simply had me thinking about maybe terms for workers of some kind.

I was completely and utterly stumped even once I'd found SHARP purely by chance. In fact, it was only when I stumbled upon CLEF and FLAT as well that I realized what was needed here. The problem was that my knowledge was not strong enough to know what the other answers might be – so I ended up solving it all by brute force. Every single word. Not fun.

How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Thursday 25 April, game #53)

• CROWN
• HELMET
• BEANIE
• BERET
• FEDORA
• BONNET
• TURBAN
• SPANGRAM: HEADWEAR