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If you're reading this, you're looking for a little help playing Strands, the New York Times' elevated word-search game.

Strands requires the player to perform a twist on the classic word search. Words can be made from linked letters — up, down, left, right, or diagonal, but words can also change direction, resulting in quirky shapes and patterns. Every single letter in the grid will be part of an answer. There's always a theme linking every solution, along with the "spangram," a special, word or phrase that sums up that day's theme, and spans the entire grid horizontally or vertically.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable

By providing an opaque hint and not providing the word list, Strands creates a brain-teasing game that takes a little longer to play than its other games, like Wordle and Connections.

If you're feeling stuck or just don't have 10 or more minutes to figure out today's puzzle, we've got all the NYT Strands hints for today's puzzle you need to progress at your preferred pace.

SEE ALSO: Wordle today: Answer, hints for January 5 SEE ALSO: NYT Connections hints today: Clues, answers for January 5 NYT Strands hint for today’s theme: Cold snap

These words are common in a winter forecast.

Today’s NYT Strands theme plainly explained

Words are variations of wet, icy, or frozen weather.

NYT Strands spangram hint: Is it vertical or horizontal?

Today's NYT Strands spangram is vertical.

NYT Strands spangram answer today

Today's spangram is Winter Weather.

Featured Video For You Strands 101: How to win NYT’s latest word game NYT Strands word list for January 4

• Frost

• Blizzard

• Snow

• Sleet

• Drizzle

• Flurry

• Winter Weather

Looking for other daily online games? Mashable's Games page has more hints, and if you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now!

Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to yesterday's Strands.

Meta has shut down its AI character accounts after backlash, NBC News and others have reported.

While Meta launched these characters in 2023, along with AI personas with celebrity avatars, many online (re)discovered them this week following a recent Financial Times interview with Meta's VP of product for generative AI, Connor Hayes. Hayes mentioned AI characters on Instagram and Facebook, saying, "We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do."

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"They'll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform ...that’s where we see all of this going," he continued.

Meta shut down its celebrity AI avatars last year, but noncelebrity AI profiles continued — though many stopped posting in 2024, 404 Media reported. The Financial Times interview, however, caused people to look for these profiles. What they discovered were offensive depictions of marginalized groups. One example is Meta's AI character profile "Liv," who was described as a "Proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller":

Tweet may have been deleted

Liv told Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah in chats that its creators "admitted they lacked diverse references," later stating that no Black people were involved in its creation.

In addition to Liv, Meta also created profiles like "Grandpa Brian," a Black retired businessman, and "Carter," a dating coach. The discovery of these profiles led to an outroar on X, Bluesky, and Meta-owned Threads, NBC News reported, and as of publication Meta has deleted all 28 AI profiles it announced back in September 2023 — both the celebrity and non-celebrity ones.

A Meta spokesperson told NBC News and 404 Media that these profiles were deleted due to a "bug" in users' ability to block the profiles:

There is confusion: the recent Financial Times article was about our vision for AI characters existing on our platforms over time, not announcing any new product...The accounts referenced are from a test we launched at Connect in 2023. These were managed by humans and were part of an early experiment we did with AI characters. We identified the bug that was impacting the ability for people to block those AIs and are removing those accounts to fix the issue.

Waymo, the ride-hailing app that operates driverless cars and is owned by Google parent company Alphabet, stopped a man from driving off in one of its electric Jaguars on Thursday, CBS News and others reported.

LAPD responded to a report of an attempted auto theft shortly after midnight on Thursday morning, according to the Los Angeles Times, where they found a man sitting in the driver's seat of a Waymo vehicle. The man, who may have been under the influence, had reportedly entered through the passenger's seat and slid into the driver's side. Normally, no one is in the driver's seat save for occasions when a Waymo employee does so to test the car.

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The company told the LA Times that Waymo cars are designed so people can't override the automated driving system. The vehicles can also move evasively, honk its horns, announce 911 is being called, and fold in exterior door handles so no one can get inside.

If someone does get in the driver's seat, Waymo's rider support team is alerted and can request the person leave the car. If they don't — like what happened with the man on Thursday — the police are called. In the five million rides Waymo has provided, only a "handful" of people have attempted to steal the cars, the company told the LA Times. The Los Angeles man who climbed into the Waymo this week was eventually released by police at the scene.

Waymo's autonomous vehicles are currently servicing Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix, and are coming soon to Austin, Atlanta, and Miami, according to its website.