Strands of Propaganda

My aim in writing this book is to help expose some of the propaganda and some of the censorship but, more importantly, to enable you to spot examples for yourself and to see how you are being manipulated.¹

— Vernon Coleman

Strands parody meme: Strands. Find hidden words and uncover today's propaganda.

I like to play Wordle. Not sure how long I’ve been playing it, but it has been a number of years now. I also play a couple of other New York Time’s word games that I found recently: Spelling Bee and Strands.

I play the free versions, not going to give NYT any money, but I enjoy the games at the end of the day. Strands has become my favorite.

Strands is a grid of letters made up of words. Each day there’s a theme phrase above the grid that is supposed to clue you into what the words are about.

A recent game of Strands had as it theme phrase:

Staying healthy

What words would you expect to find for that phrase? I started looking for words like “exercise,” “organic,” “vegetables,” “fruit,” or “chicken.” Understandably I didn’t look for “beef,” “butter,” or “eggs,” this is the New York Times, after all, not A Midwestern Doctor (consider subscribing).

If players are having difficulty finding words they can earn hints by discovering three words that are not in the solution, which I started to do. When players click the button “Hint” the letters of the word are outlined and all that’s needed is to figure out the correct order.

The first word the hint gave me was “refill.” Refill? What the hell has that got to do with health? You would think, me being The Inmate, I’d have figured out where this was headed, but the only thing that came to mind, and I’m not kidding here or trying to be funny, was refilling soda at a fast food establishment—but surely an over-priced sugar drink was not about health. I don’t remember the order in which I found the rest of the words, but here they are:

Refill
Consult
Counter
Medicine
Immunization
Pharmacy

And that, fellow Inmates, is the key to staying healthy: order your medicine and immunization, then get your ass down to the pharmacy, mosey up the counter to get your prescription with a consult and don’t forget to schedule your refill and get immunized.

Apparently, staying healthy is a lot easier than eating healthy.

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