Need help with the NYT strand? Today's topic - “Yas Queen!” - is a difficult one that requires a little (slightly old-fashioned) pop culture knowledge.

Below, we've compiled some helpful hints and what-if answers for Strands #272. We'll start with a few tips, and then connect them to the complete answer to Strands #272.

WARNING: There are spoilers for Strands #272.

The official theme for NYT Strands #272 is... “YAS QUEEN!”

And here's an unofficial hint from me: “Freddy, Brian, Roger, John.”

If you're still not sure, here are a few useful words that give valuable hint tokens:

Still having trouble? Spangram gives you a hint on conjunctions. Today it starts with 'B' and ends with 'Y'.

Scroll down to see what it is.

It's BOHEMIANRHAPSODY.

Now, what's the answer to today's strand?

Drumroll, please.

... Spangram was BOHEMIANRHAPSODY.

Strand #272

“Yaas Queen!”

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Hello Strand fans! This is a difficult puzzle, I just didn't use any hints thanks to enormous luck.

I was totally lost at first, not knowing what the theme “Yas Queen! - I had no idea what the theme “Yas Queen!” meant; the capitalization of the “Q” was important, and I knew it referred to glam rock bands from the 70s and 80s, but I didn't know that because I was collecting words for the hint section above and happened upon “BLOWS.

As I continued to search for the clue words, I noticed the spelling of “rhapsody” and the theme finally hit me. Following the spelling of Queen's hit song “BOHEMIANRHAPSODY” backwards, the board suddenly opened up.

Still, I am not the kind of person who has all the lyrics of a song etched in my head, so it was not so easy. However, things were simplified a bit by the fact that both “REAL” and “LIFE” were chorded in the upper corner by the spangrams; FANTASY was also obvious, nicely blocking out the WIND in the lower right corner, and the “FANTASY” was also obvious, nicely blocking out the WIND in the upper right corner.

Two words were left in the middle of the grid, found in the same order as they appear in the song: EASY, COME, in that order, completed the puzzle.

Reading this late in the day? The full article on Strand's solution to yesterday's game #271 can be found here.