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Tuesday, January 13, 2026, brings the NYT Strands clue “You need to chill.” The theme is frozen food. If you want to solve it yourself, start with the hints below; the spangram and complete answer list follow after a spoiler warning.
Hints for the January 13 Strands puzzle
The puzzle’s theme clue is “You need to chill.” A further nudge is that the answers are found in a certain grocery-store aisle. Think of foods kept frozen rather than a general idea of cold.
Answer initials
If you want a stronger hint without seeing the words, the first two letters are PI, PO, VE, WA, SH, and FR. They are given as an unordered set because published guides list them in different board orders.
How Strands works
Strands is a daily word-search game on the NYT website and in the NYT Games app. Its board has six rows and eight columns. Trace words through adjacent letters horizontally, vertically, or diagonally; a word’s path can turn. Each letter is used once across the themed entries.
Quick wins for a faster PC:
Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →- Theme words remain blue when found.
- The spangram describes the shared theme, touches at least two sides of the board, and remains yellow.
- Forbes reports that finding three valid non-theme words of at least four letters unlocks a hint.
Spoiler warning: spangram and answers
The complete solution is below.
Spangram
FROZEN FOOD
Theme words
- PIZZA
- POPSICLES
- VEGETABLES
- WAFFLES
- SHERBET
Together, the five theme words and the spangram make up the six entries for this puzzle. The answers are corroborated by Forbes and Parade.
Quick Recap
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