Need help with today's NYT strand? Today's theme, “Fun at the Festival of Lights,” is difficult without knowledge of the celebration itself.

Below we have compiled some helpful hints for Strands #301, as well as answers when you need them. We will start with the hints and then lead you to the full Strands #301 solution.

WARNING: There are spoilers for Strands #301.

The official theme for NYT Strands #301 is... “Festival of Lights.”

And here's an unofficial hint from me: ‘festive treats.’

If you're still in the dark, here are some useful words that will give you valuable hint tokens:

Still having trouble? Spangram gives you a hint on conjunctive words. Today's word starts with H and ends with S.

HANNUKAHFOODS.

Now, what is the answer to today's Strand game #301?

Drumroll please.

... Spangram was HANNUKAHFOODS.

Strands #301

“Festival of Lights delights”

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Hello Strands fans! Even though I knew that the Festival of Lights refers to Hanukkah, I had to really rack my brains to come up with food associated with it, so I was very happy that I was able to complete it without using any hints.

After realizing that “Hanukkah” by itself is not spangram, I set out to find the answer; “CHALLAH” was the first thing that came to mind, and it was in the lower right corner. Then there was LATKES on the other side, and BRISKET between them.

This left enough space to clarify that the spangram most likely ended in “oods,” so I joined the two together to make “HANNUKAHFOODS,” since this was clearly about Hanukkah.

This left two answers in the upper half of the grid. First, there was APPLESAUCE in the upper right corner, so I solved the anagram of UGKEL to complete the puzzle. It was, of course, KUGEL.

Are you reading this late in the day? The full article about Strand's solution to yesterday's game #300 can be found here.