NYT Strands today — hints, spangram and answers for game #406 (Sunday, April 13 2025)

Need some assistance with NYT Strands today? Today's theme — "Orange door hinge" — spells out the meaning of the puzzle, but it's still a tricky one to complete.

Below, we've compiled some useful hints for Strands #406, 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 #406, so read on if you need a little help.

Warning: Spoilers lie ahead for Strands #406.

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

The official theme for NYT Strands #406 is... "Orange door hinge".

And here's an unofficial hint from me: "Poetic shades".

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

• READS
• QUOTE
• OPAQUE
• COPE
• LOADS
• POLL
• PROLE

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

Scroll down to find out what it is...

It's COLORRHYMES.

Today's Strands answers

So, what are today's Strands answers for game #406?

Drumroll, please...

• QUEEN
• HELLO
• FLEW
• HEIGHT
• PLAQUE
• PILOT
• SPREAD

...and the spangram was COLORRHYMES.

Strands #406

“Orange door hinge”

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Hi Strands fans. This proved to be a tricky one. Despite associating "orange" and "door hinge" as a half rhyme, thanks to the Barenaked Ladies song Four Seconds, my immediate assumption was that this would be words that people consider to be unrhymeable.

This quickly proved not to be the case, as I found QUEEN and HELLO in the top-left corner. These both have obvious rhymes, so I needed a clue that revealed FLEW near the bottom-right corner.

I got HEIGHT around it, and with taht, I went back to the word "rhymes" that I found earlier to try and complete the spangram.

Eventually I got it: COLORRHYMES. Ah, okay: QUEEN = green, HELLO = yellow, HEIGHT = white and FLEW = blue.

That made the last two a bit easier. If found PILOT (violent) in the bottom-left corner, and then PLAQUE (black) immediately above it to complete the puzzle.

Yesterday's Strands answers

Reading this in a later time zone? You can find the full article on yesterday's Strands answers for game #405 right here.