Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle has a fun seasonal theme, and it’s not terribly tough. But if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story. 

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Br-r-r-r-r!

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Hand me my jacket!

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

• COLA, CHIP, CHILL, HILL, SONG, RIGID, PILL, CARL

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

• CHILLY, POLAR, COLD, COOL, FREEZING, FRIGID, GLACIAL

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is NOTSOHOT. To find it, start with the N that’s four letters to the right on the top row, and wind down.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Toughest Strands puzzles

Here are some of the Strands topics I’ve found to be the toughest in recent weeks.

#1: Dated slang, Jan. 21. Maybe you didn’t even use this lingo when it was cool. Toughest word: PHAT.

#2: Thar she blows! Jan.15. I guess marine biologists might ace this one. Toughest word: BALEEN or RIGHT. 

#3: Off the hook, Jan. 9. Similar to the Jan. 15 puzzle in that it helps to know a lot about sea creatures. Sorry, Charlie. Toughest word: BIGEYE or SKIPJACK.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? There’s a fun little meta clue for regular solvers in 7-Across. Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: S, as in shaker
Answer: SALT

5A clue: Cawing bird
Answer: CROW

6A clue: ___ shrimp (oxymoron)
Answer: JUMBO

7A clue: Most common instrument in New York Times crosswords, with over 800 appearances
Answer: OBOE

8A clue: Units of corn
Answer: EARS

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Kind of gear for diving
Answer: SCUBA

2D clue: Knight’s protection
Answer: ARMOR

3D clue: Brain sections
Answer: LOBES

4D clue: Number of teeth for Goofy
Answer: TWO

6D clue: Presidential first name of the 2020s
Answer: JOE

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

‘Tis the season for year-end recaps from the online services you frequent. The latest entry: Your Year with ChatGPT, a look back at your interactions with the AI chatbot, in the spirit of Spotify Wrapped.

Available now in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand for all users across the web and mobile devices, it looks at your queries to pull together the biggest themes and curiosities in a pastel-colored package. Your Year with ChatGPT also gives awards with certain attributes and ranks them in various archetypes against other ChatGPT users.

For example, I got an inventor award and recognition as a «navigator» archetype, which accounts for 22.9% of users. That makes sense, given how much time I spent investigating how ChatGPT functions, both as a thing itself and in comparison with other chatbots like Claude and Gemini. I do some serious stress-testing of these AI tools.

The year-end review also generated an AI image of all my interests. 

To get a Your Year with ChatGPT, you have to have «reference saved memories» and «reference chat history» turned on. You also needed to use ChatGPT a minimum number of times to trigger the feature. Your Year with ChatGPT isn’t available for Team, Enterprise or Education accounts.

ChatGPT maker OpenAI is following in the well-trod footsteps of year-end reviews from other tech companies. Spotify Wrapped is the buzziest, with users eager to sharing their results on social media. It’s prompted some creators to film their own parody wrapped videos showcasing their dismal dating lives. YouTube too latched onto the trend with Recap, showcasing the creators that users watched most throughout the year and where they landed against all viewers. Other end-of-year rewinds include Google Search, Google Photos, Apple Music, PlayStation and Steam. 

Your Year with ChatGPT caps a successful, if rocky, year for OpenAI. The company released GPT-5 — which many users weren’t crazy about — and its open weights local model named GPT-OSS. OpenAI also inked major infrastructure deals with Oracle, Nvidia and AMD, shooting its valuation to $830 billion, and it moved from being a nonprofit-esque public benefit company to a privately held company, laying the groundwork for a potential initial public offering. 

At the same time, it’s been feeling the heat from Google’s AI efforts, including the launch of Gemini 3. Investors are also becoming wary of OpenAI’s cash burn amid concerns of a larger AI bubble.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)